USDA accreditation revoked from organic certifier

by Nicole Weston, Posted Aug 3rd 2006 @ 9:03AM

After a recent exposé, of sorts, that took a very close look over whether the organic label could be trusted, the USDA has finally taken action against an organic certifier that was not performing to the standards that consumers expect. It revoked the accreditation of the American Food Safety Institute International in Wisconsin for multiple violations of the National Organic Program's (NOP) policies. The violations include:

"Providing certification services to operations to which American Food Safety's president, Karl Kolb, currently provides consulting services.
Failing to provide a full disclosure of conflicts of interest in its application for accreditation.
Issuing an organic certification to an operation that used seeds that had been treated with prohibited substances.
Failing to issue notices of noncompliance and proposed revocation or suspension to a company that had violated NOP regulations."

All of the farms and businesses that were certified by the American Food Safety, which did not appeal on the grounds that "the work didn't fit its business model," must find other certifying agents.

Source

Filed Under: Farming, Business, Ingredients
Tags: accreditation, certification, farming, national organic program, nop, organic, organic certification, organics, revoked, revoked certification, RevokedCertification, usda

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

8-03-2006 @10:12AM Angela Pitt said... This bit of news has interests to me since I'm lookig
to start working with an organic program hosted by my
employers. Thanks for the heads up!
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8-03-2006 @11:26AM MJ said... they need to seriously work on that as musch as they cahrge for organic products! You might as well grow it yourself. Who can you trust?
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