A report on MSNBC’s website reveals that an organic certification we should be able to trust may not be trustworthy after all.

According to the report, a program manager named Barbara Robinson repeatedly bowed to pressure from large producers to weaken or override regulations, even allowing synthetics produced with hexane, a neurotoxin, to be added to baby formula that carries the USDA organic seal. Even organic milk, which should require cows to be at least sometimes put to pasture, may be produced from cows continually confined to feed lots.

“It will unravel everything we’ve done if the standards can no longer be trusted,” said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), who sponsored the federal organics legislation. “If we don’t protect the brand, the organic label, the program is finished. It could disappear overnight.” [quoted from MSNBC]

I agree with the report’s contention that the USDA organic label is under serious threat of irrelevancy. Unfortunately, most consumers will continue to trust the seal as the utmost authority of what foods are indeed produced using trusted organic methods, if for no other reason than that they simply don’t have time to research the various organic certifications. Until the time comes that the USDA National Organic Program can be trusted, I will encourage others to visit the Organic Consumer Association‘s site to find out more about what foods can be trusted as organic. And write to your representatives and the Obama administration and demand that the USDA National Organic Program be put back on track and that people like Barbara Robinson be fired, so that the taxpayer money spent on the program is not wasted on a soon to be meaningless logo.

(Maybe the whole USDA National Organic Program, as implemented, is not such a good idea anyway. Read USDA Organic Seal – Killing hometown organic farms in America? for more.)