© The Register-Guard
Sales of organic foods have climbed for the past decade, outpacing the growth of their conventional counterparts, as consumers paid a premium for food they saw as safer, higher quality and more environmentally friendly.
But at the same time demand for organics was growing, some of the companies producing organic food were quietly reducing their use of organic ingredients. This happened for a variety of reasons, including rising commodity prices and, in some cases, new corporate parents strongly rooted in conventional food processing.
The switch from organic to nonorganic ingredients hasn't always been apparent to customers - or even to the retailers selling them.
In the most recent case to come to light, many consumers across the country have been scooping Golden Temple granola from bulk bins and buying boxes of Peace Cereal thinking the products are made with mostly organic ingredients, when they haven't been for years, according to an organic foods industry watchdog group.
Many stores still listed organic oats as a main ingredient on the labels for Golden Temple's bulk granola and incorrectly identified Peace Cereal as organic in store signage, said Mark Kastel, co-founder of the Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin watchdog group that found widespread mislabeling of Golden Temple cereals at stores in several regions of the country.
The cereals are manufactured in Eugene by Hearthside Food Solutions, the Illinois company that bought Golden Temple's cereal division in May.
Hearthside declined to respond to requests for comment. But the division's former marketing manager said letters announcing the ingredients switch were sent to the company distributor and retailer accounts.
It's not common for stores to misidentify conventional products as organic, Kastel said. But when it happens, it defrauds consumers and threatens the integrity of the organic label, he and other organic advocates said.
It's crucial that organic products are identified correctly, said Ron Leppert, grocery manager at Sundance Natural Foods in south Eugene. "The people who are going to spend the extra money on a cleaner product want to know that they're getting what they paid for," he said.
When foods are incorrectly labeled as organic, Kastel said, "Somebody is making a lot of extra money ... and it's not the farmers. And the consumers aren't getting a truly premium product."
"We all own the organic label together - farmers, processors, retailers and consumers," he said. So when products are mislabeled, "It hurts the reputation of the organic label and thus all of us," he said.
The organic industry has grown into a $28 billion a year business in the United States, Kastel said. "We don't want profiteering at the expense of the good will we've earned over the years."
Golden Temple is just the latest example of a formerly organic company switching to "so-called natural ingredients," said Ronnie Cummins, director of the Organic Consumers Association, based in Finland, Minn.
In early 2009, Dean Foods, the Dallas owner of Silk brand soy milk, stopped making many of its products from organic soybeans and quietly removed the organic label from its distinctive blue cartons. But Dean didn't change the bar code or the package design, the company acknowledged to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, so many grocers and shoppers didn't realize at first that the products were no longer organic. Dean blamed distributors for not following through on a letter it had send to them, explaining to retailers that the nonorganic products carried an organic bar code.
Some manufacturers have switched from producing "organic" products to "natural" products, a term that is not federally regulated and does not require the food maker to use the more expensive organic ingredients.
"The bottom line is you make more money on selling natural than organic, so that's why (manufacturers are) doing it," Cummins said. "It's a disturbing trend because polls show many consumers are confused about the difference between "natural" and "organic," and they see products that are cheaper and think, 'Oh all-natural, that's almost organic, I'll buy that,' " he said.
Only foods deemed 100 percent organic by the U.S. Department of Agriculture are certified as being produced without antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, irradiation or genetically modified ingredients.
Accurate labeling is a big issue for organic consumers, and it's going to get even bigger because people are concerned about it, Cumins said, "and they're angry when they hear there are misleading labels out there."
To prevent future problems, the Cornucopia Institute last month requested a rule change with the National Organic Standards Board, the expert panel that advises the secretary of agriculture on organic standards.
The rule change would require food manufacturers to update their bar codes and formally notify their customers if they change their products' organic status.
Many organic consumer groups and retailers said they support the proposed rules change.
After several months of investigation in late 2010 and early 2011, the Cornucopia Institute said it found that Golden Temple failed to change bar codes on its cereal and to effectively notify retailers when it switched to nonorganic ingredients in 2008.
That led many stores, including some in the Eugene-Springfield area, to continue for months - even years - to identify Golden Temple cereals as "organic" on bulk bin labels and shelf signage, the institute said.
Dan Beilock, owner of the Red Barn Natural Grocery in the Whiteaker neighborhood of Eugene, said he doesn't recall being notified by Golden Temple about its ingredients switch.
He said he eventually found out through a distributor.
"It did create some confusion," Beilock said. So "organic oats" instead of just "oats" was listed as an ingredient on the bin label at Red Barn until the store found out that Golden Temple granola no longer contained organic oats, he said.
"There was probably a six-month to eight-month lag before we figured it out fully," Beilock said.
Robert Ziehl, who was marketing manager when Golden Temple switched to nonorganic ingredients in 2008, said the company did so to keep a lid on sharply rising costs of organic grains, fruits and nuts.
"By reducing organic content, we were able to avoid passing on dramatic price increases to our consumers," he said.
Many commodities were skyrocketing in 2008. The average cost of a bushel of oats - organic and nonorganic - in the United States was $3.15, according to the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service. A bushel, or roughly 32 pounds, of organic oats cost $3.82 - 67 cents more per bushel than the overall average.
Oat prices have fallen since then - the average price per bushel last year was $2.40. But prices are on the rise again this year, with an average of $3.11 per bushel in January and a preliminary average of $3.38 per bushel in February, the statistics service said.
Ziehl provided The Register-Guard with copies of form letters, which he said were sent in 2008 to buyers and brokers at the company's distributors and to direct retail accounts.
The letters said Golden Temple granola and Peace Cereals would be reformulated because of dramatic increases in the cost of cereal ingredients. In the granola, "organic oats will be replaced by freshly milled all natural oats, made and processed without the use of GMOs" (genetically modified organisms), and in Peace Cereals, "all ingredients will continue to be all natural, made and processed without the use of GMOs," the letters said.
After the switch, the company always accurately identified the organic content of its products, Ziehl said. The price of the cereals didn't change to reflect the lower cost of materials, however, the Cornucopia Institute and retailers said.
"Three years ago when Peace Cereal changed from organic to conventional ingredients, they did so claiming that it was because the prices of organic ingredients were too high and consumers wouldn't pay that premium," Kastel said. "The irony is now under its new ownership, they're actually charging more for the cereal than a number of major brands that are certified organic."
He said his statement was based on observations of shelf price by a number of retailers across the country.
Hearthside Food Solutions, which has headquarters in Downers Grove, Ill., did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
For years, Golden Temple was a cornerstone of the natural and organic food industry in Lane County.
Golden Temple's roots date to 1972 when local students of Yogi Bhajan, who founded his own brand of Sikhism incorporating kundalini yoga, started a bakery in Springfield. Yogi Bhajan died in 2004, and factions of the community he created now are involved in multiple legal disputes.
Kastel, of the Cornucopia Institute, said Hearthside bears some responsibility in the mislabeling problems. "Their sales staff and brokers are in stores all the time, and they're looking at how their products are merchandised," he said. "Someone had to see this at some point."
"These people for years have been enjoying extra profits because of the less-than-competent approach of their predecessor and the retail community, who through their databases and everything else, were misinformed," Kastel said.
"They (Hearthside) have been riding this up escalator with the rest of the true organic players," he said.
The labeling problems came to Cornucopia Institute's attention late last year after an inspection of a certified organic store in St. Louis, Kastel said.
The inspector noticed that the label on the bin containing Golden Temple granola listed organic oats, but the boxes containing the granola weren't stamped "organic oats."
The institute then contacted and visited other stores, from member-owned food co-ops to major national chains, and found widespread in-store labeling problems. Even Whole Foods Markets displayed inaccurate "organic" signs with the Golden Temple cereals, Kastel said.
"I'm sure if we go out and do a bigger sampling of stores, we can still find this happening," he said.
Interpreting Labels
100% organic: All organic ingredients produced without synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides or sewage sludge; growth hormones or antibiotics in livestock; food irradiation or genetically modified organisms; and farmers adhere to soil and water conservation methods and to rules about the humane treatment of animals
Organic: At least 95 percent organic ingredients; remaining 5 percent can be approved nonorganic ingredients, such as citric acid and baking powder, or approved nonorganic agricultural ingredients when they're not available in organic form
Made with organic ingredients: At least 70% organic ingredients. The label must identify both organic and nonorganic ingredients
100% natural; all-natural; natural: Not federally regulated
Comment: To learn more about the difference between 'Organic' and 'Natural' labeling on health food products read the following article:
The Organic Elite Surrenders to Monsanto: What Now?
From the article:
Many well-meaning consumers are confused about the difference between conventional products marketed as "natural," and those nutritionally/environmentally superior and climate-friendly products that are "certified organic."
Retail stores like Whole Foods and wholesale distributors like UNFI have failed to educate their customers about the qualitative difference between natural and certified organic, conveniently glossing over the fact that nearly all of the processed "natural" foods and products they sell contain GMOs, or else come from a "natural" supply chain where animals are force-fed GMO grains in factory farms or Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs).
A troubling trend in organics today is the calculated shift on the part of certain large formerly organic brands from certified organic ingredients and products to so-called "natural" ingredients. With the exception of the "grass-fed and grass-finished" meat sector, most "natural" meat, dairy, and eggs are coming from animals reared on GMO grains and drugs, and confined, entirely, or for a good portion of their lives, in CAFOs.
Whole Foods and UNFI are maximizing their profits by selling quasi-natural products at premium organic prices. Organic consumers are increasingly left without certified organic choices while genuine organic farmers and ranchers continue to lose market share to "natural" imposters. It's no wonder that less than 1% of American farmland is certified organic, while well-intentioned but misled consumers have boosted organic and "natural" purchases to $80 billion annually-approximately 12% of all grocery store sales.
Are there no consequences for these companies that (apparently) intentionally misled their customers? Just exposing their misdeeds doesn't seem like quite enough.
Be part of the solution - grow your own food as much as possible and shop at local farmers markets!