It is a pleasure to hear the Secretary of Agriculture and his staff indicating
support for a quality National Organic Standard. Unfortunately, the first try
at the proposed rule that used up 4 years of time, 3 million dollars and an
enormous number of volunteer organic farmer, handler, certifier and consumer
hours indicates the USDA staff that wrote the proposed rule should be assigned
other duties than rewritting the rule.
It is time for Grace Gershuny, Ted Rogers, Michael Hankin and Beth Hayden to
have new job descriptions not associated with the direct rewrite of the
proposed rule. Though the administration level officials like Mike Dunn,
Assistant Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Services, and Eileen Stommes,
Director of the Transportation and Marketing Division are the individuals
appointed by the Clinton administration who are held responsible along with
the Secretary of Agriculture for the Proposed Rule, it is the NOP staff that
actually wrote the rule and who the upper level adminstrators trusted to do a
competent job.
There is absolutely no question the existing four USDA/NOP staff members
failed in their task.
This second email on SANET illustrates clearly how one of the USDA/NOP staff
sees the Organic Foods Production Act--open to "interpretation" by the staff.
The four staff members have had their opportunity to "interpret" OFPA. Their
"interpretation" has cost the public ten thousands of more hours, the USDA
tens of thousands of dollars and further disrupted the domestic and
international market for organic food and fiber. USDA/NOP staff that can not
understand OFPA clearly should not be writing the detailed application of
OFPA. The USDA/NOP staff have spent years and much money on introducing their
"interpretation" of organic. It is time to have some one write the next
proposed rule that is not choosing to "interpret" OFPA, but following it.
Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 22:35:00 -0500
From: Grace J Gershuny <Grace_J.Gershuny@usda.gov>
Subject: Re: Firm behavior: Implications for post-NOP Rule? -Reply
This is, for the most part, consistent with the NOP's interpretation.
Beyond this, there are a great many ambiguities in OFPA that require
careful interpretation, and that can have legitimately differing
interpretations. The presumption that there is only one way to interpret
any law, especially this one, is unfounded.
Grace Gershuny
USDA NOP Staff
Best regards,
Eric Kindberg, certified organic farmer
Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 22:29:00 -0500
From: Grace J Gershuny <Grace_J.Gershuny@usda.gov>
Subject: Comments on Comments -Reply
One of the ironies of the unstated assumptions running throughout many
comments is stated by this commenter: The desire for national organic
standards is countered by the presumption that USDA is not willing or
able to implement them because of its historic opposition to organic
agriculture. The commenter then goes on to praise the
conservation-oriented agencies, despite USDA's history of also
supporting commodity subsidy programs that discourage soil
conservation (the infamous "hedgerow to hedgerow" policies for
example). The fact is that the administration of USDA now publicly
supports implementation of national organic standards that, in the words
of the Secretary, "the whole community can embrace." With the amount
of publicity being generated by the proposed rules, the political fallout of
reversing this position would seem to be too large to ignore.
Grace Gershuny
USDA, National Organic Program Staff
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