CORNUCOPIA, WIS. – An investigation by the USDAs National Organic Program
has determined that Target Corporation wrongly used the image of a certified
organic product when promoting the sale of a conventional product to consumers.
The investigation was triggered by a complaint filed by The Cornucopia
Institute.
The violation at Target came after Dean Foods switched almost all their
category-leading Silk soymilk from organic to conventional soybeans earlier this
year. The specific problem involved Target using an image of a Silk organic
product, in advertising flyers, when the retailer was really selling Silks
reformulated natural version (not organic, but made with conventional
soybeans). Target made a commitment to the USDA to review their procedures to
prevent future errors of this nature.
Dean Foods stealthily switched its core Silk product line to cheaper
conventional soybeans, while, until recently, retaining the same packaging
appearance. Now the giant dairy processors WhiteWave division has been found
itself to also be misrepresenting the product as organic on one of their own
websites. A new legal complaint has been filed in an attempt to protect
consumers from what Cornucopia calls, fraudulent misrepresentation.
It should not take the judicious oversight of an industry watchdog to cause
these giant corporations to simply comply with the law, said Mark Kastel,
Cornucopias Senior Farm Policy Analyst. Target and Dean are trying to do
organics on the cheap and have not invested in the kind of management expertise
necessary to prevent problems of this nature from occurring, added Kastel. And
after widespread media condemnation, its hard to believe that Dean Foods hasnt
even cleaned up its own websites.
Since the NOP investigation, and Targets pledge to review their practices,
unlike Dean Foods, Cornucopia has not observed additional problems with the
retailers advertising.
The meteoric rise in consumer interest in healthy, environmentally sound and
humane farming practices has catapulted organics into a $24 billion industry.
Along the way, major agribusinesses, like General Mills, Dean Foods and Kraft
have gobbled up many pioneering companies that helped build the industry through
a series of acquisitions. Today, most processed organic food is produced and
controlled by the same type of companies that bring us International Delight
imitation coffee creamer, Cheetos, Ding Dongs and Capn Crunch.
No longer controlled by industry visionaries, corporate managers now seek to
squeeze extra profits out by sometimes switching established organic brands to
natural labeling, using cheaper conventionally grown and processed
ingredients.
Thats a far cry from when the organic food and farming movement first started
enjoying widespread commercial success in the 1980s. In its inception, the
industry was dominated by a number of family businesses, entrepreneurial
enterprises and farmer-owned cooperatives, where building a profitable brand was
most often married with the owners values.
Big is not necessarily bad in the organic industry, said Kastel. As an
organic watchdog we are much more concerned with corporate ethics than we are
with corporate scale.
Dean Foods, the largest dairy processor in the United States, has apparently
acquiesced and finally changed the packaging for their Silk brand of soymilk.
Cornucopia had sparked widespread media scrutiny, and associated consumer
backlash, against Dean for quietly shifting their core Silk product line from
organic to conventional soybeanswhile keeping essentially the same packaging
and UPC (scanner) barcodes. This change [new packaging] should have happened
right as they shifted to conventional soybeans, not after the fact, said
Kastel.
For the better part of this past year, consumers and retailers both have
repeatedly reported that they were deceived and ended up unknowingly buying Silk
products with conventional soybeans, stated Kastel. With both their new and old
packaging still in the marketplace, Cornucopia is concerned that consumers will
be misled by advertising on websites representing the product as organic.
Silk is manufactured and distributed by Dean Foods WhiteWave-MorningStar
division headquartered in Longmont, Colorado. Like many other massive
agribusiness corporations, the Dean name never appears on the packaging for its
soy foods or its Horizon dairy label just as consumers will never see the name
General Mills on a package of Cascadian Farms frozen vegetables, Kraft on Back
to Nature brand crackers or Kelloggs on Kashi cereal.
Dean/WhiteWave spokesperson Sara Loveday denied the corporation intentionally
misled their customers, telling the East Bay Express in a November interview,
The company was not trying take advantage of consumer confusion over organic
and natural.
These corporate food giants know that many organic consumers are looking for an
alternative to our current food production system, said Will Fantle, who heads
up Cornucopias research staff. Upon acquiring a number of the leading organic
pioneers, they have kept their subsidiary names upfront on packaging to create a
facade hiding the true corporate ownership, Fantle noted.
Cornucopia maintains a chart, Who Owns Organics, created by Michigan State
University professor Philip Howard, on its website that lifts the veil, enabling
consumers to know who is producing their favorite organic brands (http://www.cornucopia.org/who-owns-organic/).
Roy Beard, who has operated Roys Natural Market in Dallas for 41 years, told
the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, in their November 8 coverage surrounding the Silk
controversy, that he hadnt realized there was a product change until contacted
by a reporter. He said retaining the same bar code was troubling. Most
retailers were never informed of the Silk switch to conventional soybeans.
Dean/WhiteWave has also received heat in the organic food and agriculture
community for choosing to convert some of their Horizon dairy products, the
leading organic label in terms of sales volume, to cheaper natural
(conventional) ingredients.
This really hit a nerve because one of these new Horizon products, Little
Blends yogurt, is aimed specifically at toddlers, at an early stage of
development, where the nutritional superiority of organic food, and its benefit
of avoiding chemical residues in our food, is so critically important, Kastel
explained. This starkly undermines the propaganda on the Horizon website
proclaiming how dedicated they are to the organic movement this is all about
profit, not values!
The media blow up on the Silk switcheroo included a front-page story in the
Chicago Tribune in July that outlined a consumer survey indicating the public
was unclear about the difference between natural and organic labels and that
some corporations, particularly Dean Foods, were taking advantage of the
confusion in the marketplace.
Dean has only added to the marketplace confusion between natural and
organic, as they definitely do not mean the same thing, and natural requires
no verification whatsoever, Urvashi Rangan, a senior scientist at Consumers
Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, also told Barry Shlachter of the
Star-Telegram.
The Cornucopias Kastel likes to identify corporate giant Heinz as a company
doing organics right. They helped fund California tomato growers who switched
to organic production, and they brought in a highly reputable organic certifier,
produced the product in their own plant, and finally put the Heinz name on the
label, Kastel stated. I think their ethical approach to organic production is
what consumers expect and is being rewarded in the marketplace by virtue of the
success theyre having with their organic ketchup.
Cornucopia also cites Stonyfield yogurt, which was acquired by group Danone of
France, as another example of a large public corporation continuing to uphold
organic values. Stonyfield remains committed to buying all of their milk from
family-scale organic farmers, unlike Dean Foods that is increasingly relying on
factory farms for its Horizon milk supply.
The independently owned organizations, although they are fewer, have not
totally gone away, observed Fantle. Eden Foods, Natures Path and Organic
Valley, among others, are still independently owned even though they each do as
much as $500 million of business every year.
The new legal complaint filed against Dean Foods, for representing their
conventional Silk soymilk as organic on one of their websites, was filed with
the USDAs National Organic Program. We fully expect the NOP to send a cease
and desist order to Dean Foods, said Kastel. If Dean, a $12 billion a year
public corporation, is found to have willfully violated the federal law
governing organic commerce, it could be subject to fines and other penalties.
Another website maintained by Dean/WhiteWave, http://www.silksoymilk.com, shows
their new redesigned packaging. Since they changed to conventional soybeans in
the first quarter of 2009 this package redesign is very, very late and in the
meantime many consumers picked up Silk, thinking that was still organic, and
were taken advantage of, said Kastel.
Many retailers complained, and have subsequently dropped Silk products believing
they and their customers were intentionally deceived. Kastel responded by
saying, I think Dean Foods should make a very generous contribution, using
their ill-gotten gains, since they saved so much from switching from organic to
conventional soybeans, to one of the feeding programs in this country that are
facing incredible pressure right now from those who are facing food
insecurity.
A copy of the formal legal complaint, by The Cornucopia Institute, charging Dean
Foods with allegedly violating of federal organic regulations, can be accessed
at:
www.cornucopia.org/Silk/WhiteWaveComplaint.pdf
Source:
The Cornucopia Institute