Cornucopia Institute Says Target Selling Fake Organic Food

October 21, 2009

3 Min Read
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MINNEAPOLIS, Minn.The Cornucopia Institute filed formal complaints with the USDA's organic program, and Wisconsin and Minnesota officials, alleging that Target Corporation misled consumers into thinking some conventional food items it sells are organic.

"Major food processors have recognized the meteoric rise of the organic industry, and profit potential, and want to create what is in essence 'organic light,' taking advantage of the market cachet, but not being willing to do the heavy lifting required to earn the valuable USDA organic seal," said Mark A. Kastel, Senior Farm Policy Analyst at Cornucopia.

The Wisconsin-based farm policy research group discovered Target nationally advertised Silk soymilk in newspapers with the term "organic" pictured on the carton's label, when in fact the manufacturer, Dean Foods, had quietly shifted their products away from organics.

Dean Foods, and its WhiteWave division, received media scrutiny, and industry condemnation, this past spring for not notifying retailers or changing the UPC codes, when they quietly switched to conventional soybeans in their core products.

Dean/WhiteWave also received heat in the organic food and agriculture community when they decided to convert some of their Horizon products, the leading organic label in terms of sales volume, to cheaper "natural" (conventional) ingredients.

A front-page story in the Chicago Tribune in July outlined a consumer survey that showed 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.

The story quoted Suzanne Shelton, president and CEO of the Shelton Group which conducted the survey, as saying, "They [consumers] think 'natural' is regulated by the government but that organic isn't, and of course it's just the opposite."

Earlier this month in the UK, the company director of One Food Limited received a 27-month prison sentence for selling convention food with organic labels. Neil Stansfield, his wife and the firm's operations manager, bought non-organic ingredients from supermarkets, repackaged and sold them to consumers across the UK. The five-year scam netted £500,000. His wife, Katie Stansfield, received a 50-week sentence and 150 hours of community service. Operations manager Russell Hudson received a 40-week sentence and 150 hours of community service

This is not the first tangle involving Cornucopia and Target. The giant Minneapolis-based retailer's own upscale private label food line, Archer Farms, which blurs the line selling both natural and organically labeled food, came under scrutiny when Cornucopia discovered that it's organic milk supplier, Colorado-based Aurora Dairy, was flagrantly violating federal organic livestock standards and filed a complaint with the USDA.

USDA investigators determined that Aurora had willfully violated 14 federal organic regulations. The Bush administration allowed Aurora to stay in business. Unlike some other retailers, Target stuck with Aurora as their milk supplier for their Archer Farms label.

The Cornucopia Institute also filed complaints with federal and state regulators against Wal-Mart in 2006, alleging misrepresentation of conventional food as organic with improper signage in their stores, the nation's largest retailer signed consent agreements with the USDA and the state of Wisconsin committing to change their practices.

"Wal-Mart did indeed clean up its act, as we expect Target to do, but it should not take the judicious oversight of an industry watchdog to cause these giant corporations to comply with the law, said Will Fantle, research director for the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia.One of the reasons these companies can undercut other retailers is they do not invest in the kind of management expertise necessary to prevent problems of this nature from occurring."

The complaint filed with the USDAs National Organic Program can be viewed here.

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