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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not require labeling of foods treated with the fumigant, and while packages of almonds may contain the disclaimer "pasteurized," there isn't likely to be any indication by which process the nuts were treated.
The only way consumers will be able to distinguish how their "raw" almonds were pasteurized is by the organic label. Regulations mandate that foods bearing the "organic" seal cannot be treated with PPO.
The forces against organic: profit and politics
Examples of the regulated controlling the regulators -- like almond producers writing their own rules -- are rampant up and down the American food chain.
The USDA recently announced that 38 non-organic ingredients will be allowed in "organic" food. Reading the labels, consumers will be none the wiser. But the new rule is actually an improvement over previous ambiguity, as now manufacturers will be limited to using the ingredients that the National Organic Program has determined are "commercially unavailable."
Since the inception of the federal labeling program, foods labeled "USDA Organic" have been able to contain up to 5 percent non-organic ingredients. That 5 percent comprises ingredients not available in an organic form. The recent action was an effort to codify exactly which ingredients can be substituted with conventional versions in products that bear the seal, and the result will likely be fewer non-organic ingredients in "organic" food.
Although the action was controversial and remains so in the grassroots organic community, in many ways the updated regulations are not nearly as significant as the congressional action taken last year that permitted more than 500 synthetic food additives and processing aids in organic food without labeling or public review.
The language was inserted as a rider to the 2006 Agriculture appropriations bill. No hearings were held on the change. It passed despite more than 350,000 letters and phone calls to federal lawmakers, according to the Organic Consumers Association.
"The process was profoundly undemocratic and the end result is a serious setback for the multibillion dollar alternative food and farming system that the organic community has so painstakingly built up over the past 35 years," says Ronnie Cummins, national director of OCA. The 2006 controversy parallels a fight in 2003 when Congress inserted a provision into a spending bill that would have allowed meat and poultry producers to label their products "organic" even if the animals were fed conventional feed -- if the price of organic feed exceeded a certain level. The exception was later repealed. Cummins hopes to bring the same fate upon the synthetics loophole or at least significantly curtail its reach.
To groups such at the Organic Consumers Association and the Cornucopia Institute, there is a principle at stake. Individuals pay more for organic food because they want to support sustainable farming practices and avoid consuming petrochemical fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides as well as hormones and antibiotics and synthetic ingredients. The whole reason the National Organic Standards were created was to assure buyers they were getting what they paid for, but the integrity of the standards have been under industry assault since their implementation five years ago.
Hormone-free milk? Can't say
It's one thing for a manufacturer to avoid disclosure about a product's ingredients. It's quite another to prevent another company from providing information to its customers, but that is exactly what Monsanto has been up to. The biotech giant is the sole producer of artificial growth hormones given to cows to increase milk production.
A growing grassroots backlash over the use of hormones has prompted restaurant chains such as Chipotle to pledge to only use dairy products free of recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH), also known as bovine somatotropin (BST). Grocery chains Kroger, Publix and Safeway also have restricted their private-label milk to that from cows not given the drug, although Safeway has thus far made the move only in the Pacific Northwest. Starbucks has indicated that all of its coffee shops will be rBGH-free by early 2008.
Despite studies -- many funded by Monsanto -- indicating that the growth hormone is safe, questions about the injections' implications for human health have persisted since its approval in 1993. Milk produced by cows given the drug contains elevated amounts of insulin-like growth factor, which some studies have shown to increase the risk of breast, colon and prostate cancers. (No direct link has been shown between milk from cows given the hormone and increased cancer rates.)
The hormones are banned in every other industrialized country. If Monsanto has its way, it will become increasingly difficult for American consumers to even determine whether it is in their milk and what that might mean for their health. As it stands, the FDA doesn't require milk from cows treated with the hormone to be labeled at all.
Monsanto told its investors last November that growing demand of "rBGH-free" milk could affect the company's bottom line. A couple of months later, the company petitioned the FDA to issue "stronger guidance" regarding milk producers' indications on the carton that their milk is free of the artificial growth hormone.