>Incidentally, the US Department of Agriculture encourages this duplicity by
allowing labeling of organic chickens and eggs that are grown in barns
without access to any pasture. They also allow labeling of FREE RANGE any
time chickens have access to an open door that leads to the barn yard. We
should ask USDA to tighten up the labeling requirements.
Hardly fair to lay the entire blame with the USDA on this one, although I'm
hardly a fan of theirs....Can anyone tell me if there are any PRIVATE
organic certifiers that require pasture-access for livestock at all? (dairy
cattle, laying hens, and now meat animals). This sort of loophole in private
standards has allowed confinement production of organic products before meat
was allowed to be labeled "organic".
I believe that one California certifier rather vaguely encourages it, but
requiring & suggesting pasture access is another matter. I think that this
is definitely something that should be focussed on and REQUIRED, as the USDA
standards are formed. It seems to me that this would give an edge to smaller
farmers who actually graze their stock, pay taxes on their pastures, etc.
rather than the Horizon-dairy type operations who with their huge numbers
would be hard-pressed to entertain such a practice.
Julie
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