Labor Abuse on "Organic" Farms

The Organic-Industrial Complex

(article is from June 2001)

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It turns out the Cascadian Farm pictured on my TV dinner is a real farm in Rockport, Wash., that grows real food. Originally called the New Cascadian Survival and Reclamation Project, the farm was started in 1971 by Gene Kahn with the idea of growing food for the collective of environmentally minded hippies. At the time, Kahn was a 24-year-old grad-school dropout from the South Side of Chicago who, after reading "Silent Spring" and "Diet for a Small Planet," determined to go back to the land, there to change "the food system." He went on to become a pioneer of the organic movement and did much to move organic food into the mainstream.

Today, Cascadian Farm's farm is a General Mills showcase — "a PR farm," as its founder freely acknowledges — and Kahn, erstwhile hippie farmer, is a General Mills vice president and a millionaire. He has become one of the most successful figures in the organic community and also perhaps one of the most polarizing; for to many organic farmers and activists, he has come to symbolize the takeover of the movement by agribusiness.

Where does your food come from?

That loaf of Sara Lee bread on the grocery shelf in San Jose was made with flour from U.S. wheat. But the Illinois-based food giant uses honey and vitamin supplements from China.

While Paul Newman's daughter uses California figs in cookies made by her Aptos organic food company, she turns to Mexico and Austria for other ingredients.

And even though a Procter & Gamble spokeswoman described Crest toothpaste "as a truly American product," it uses additives from China and Finland.

Recent reports of tainted imports from China have focused new attention on a little-known trend: In today's global economy, more food items are being produced in this country with some ingredients from other lands. But the FDA inspects less than 1 percent of all food imports - and that means consumers must trust food makers to guarantee the safety of their products.

"It's not just the stuff that says `Made in China.' It's the stuff in the stuff that says `Made in the USA,' " said Elisa Odabashian of Consumers Union, a non-profit consumer advocacy group that publishes Consumer Reports magazine. "We're importing more and more of our food and we're inspecting almost none of it."

William Hubbard, a former Food and Drug Administration associate commissioner who is advocating for a beefed-up food safety system in the United States, agreed.

"It's not which foods contain these ingredients, but which foods don't contain them," he said.

You may not know it from the label. Food makers aren't required to disclose the source of what goes into most products.

Some major food makers won't even talk about it. Campbell's and Kraft use ingredients from around the world, although representatives there refused to say which countries supply them.

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