Progress Or Backslide?

Two weeks ago the Advisory Board (the NOSB) to the USDA-NOP passed a “recommendation” that the Dept. of Agriculture should regulate organic claims on cosmetics. Currently, the FDA regulates cosmetics labels, not the USDA-NOP. Then a bunch of “natural” food stores sent out policies or letters telling their vendors that, if they make an organic claim on a personal care item, they needed to get certified to the NOP. Spare me.

There are thousands of small companies all over the US and Canada that make uncertified “organic” claims on personal care items. Most of them do not follow the NOSB. Even in OTA, an organization that one assumes attracts dedicated “organic” businesses, in a recent survey discovered that only 9% of their personal care members are certified to the USDA-NOP. Again: nine percent!!!!

Why?

Cosmetics depend on synthetic ingredients to function well. There are simply not enough of the functional ingredients necessary to make a personal care product that performs well, which assures repeat sales. This means that conventional synthetics must be used.

How did we get to a regulation for organic food? The effort included 40-plus private certifiers serving the “organic” community from the 1960s until 2002 which created the momentum and infra-structure necessary to arrive at and support USDA-NOP certified food. It takes time to create a market and all the parts of the market necessary to make it work. (A factoid: Whole Foods profited for 24 years on non-NOP “organic” claims.)

Organic food contains certified agricultural ingredients. In cosmetics the “organic” certification of potassium cocoate, mono and di glycerides, and sucrose palmate is certification of non-agricultural ingredients. Is it best for all “organic” stakeholders to include the certification of “synthetics” under the Dept. of Agriculture?

This is what I see: people want the “organic” label to mean the same on all product categories, but it doesn’t and it can’t. I don’t want certified organic synthetic ingredients in my food. I want organic food to stay pure. I also want certified organic personal care products, but I know they need to be made using synthesized ingredients, and I want those ingredients to be synthesized out of organic raw materials. I also know putting this in place will take years.

The FDA and the NOP, under ideal conditions, cannot “enforce” a law until they have a law. First they have to agree to do this type of enforcement (remember, cosmetic labels are not currently reviewed). Then they have to either amend the Organic Food Production Law or pass a new law. Then they have to write the standard. I'd guess this could take 5 to 8 years. The NOSB seems to imply that they want enforcement now. It simply cannot happen - what do we do in the meantime?

We do what they did with food: use private standards. This could support the NOSB recommendation to the NOP and help make organic certification of cosmetics a reality. To tell companies that they “have to” get certified to the NOP when there are no safe preservatives, no mild surfactants, and no non-slimy emulsifiers is literally throwing the baby out with the bath water. We will end up back in the 1980s with an array of “natural” products and a very few “organic” products. Why can’t the NOSB support private organic cosmetic standards for now? At least people could be certified to something!

The Organic Food Production Act of 1990 was written expressly to certify AGRICULTURAL products. Personal care items are not food, I don’t want to eat them; I want them to work to clean my hair, sooth my skin, and keep my children from getting sunburned. That will not happen using a food paradigm. I want a strategic plan to get us from where we are now to that ideal certified organic cosmetic. The fact is that a number of people have made NOP PC shampoos and lotions and they do not seem to sell well. I suspect this is why we don’t see these products in Whole Foods and other “natural” stores. If we can’t get repeat sales, we can’t “grow” organic agriculture. And why would a store carry something that does not sell?

Isn’t that what this is all about? Increasing the market for organic ingredients? It won’t happen just because of the NOP seal. It will only happen if the products are good enough to create repeat sales. Shampoo is not an apple or cookies. The production of an organic apple cleans up the planet but it pretty much tastes and looks like a conventional apple. “Organic” shampoo under the NOP dries out my hair and I can’t use the lotion due to the alcohol preservative. They are not comparable to the more functional conventional versions. Darn it, I want organic versions.

Get real folks - we have a lot of work to do and it is important to do it but let’s use our brains and apply history. The NOSB’s message is well intended but poorly executed. As leaders of the industry, they should be able to supply a timeline, and a plan that will take us from 91% non-certified to 100% of players certified. Their recommendation does not do that. It just further confuses things and seems to be encouraging the removal of some pretty nice “organic” products that are not certified from the shelves. This move by the NOSB and some of the “natural” stores is a shame and diminishes the use of organic ingredients. I think we are backsliding, not making progress. What do you think?

Gay Timmons

NOSB

It is unwise to take the recent Personal Care Recommendation by the NOSB (Nat’l Organic Standards Board, an advisory board to the NOP) out of the context of the whole meeting and even out of the context of the NOSB's history.

On the NOP web site, there are 10 pages listing the titles of Recommendations (that go back 9 years) by the NOSB to the NOP (this does not include those recommendations that go back to 1994, prior to implementation nor the recommendations passed this latest meeting). Many of these are for materials, which the NOSB does a a really good job at handling. Reportedly, 65 different policy recommendations are still unresolved between the NOSB and the NOP; we still do not have standards for pet foods, textiles, or aquaculture. This is not a criticism, it is an observation about how government works. There are issues of priority, regulatory complexity, expertise within the department to deal with a particular problem that all influence the forward motion of any recommendation.

If you look at the Livestock committee, for example, you see that the first recommendation on pasture access policy was in 2001. I think I read in the "Tweets" that this was finally adopted as policy by the NOP at the meeting last week - but I may be wrong on that. Am sure someone in the know will correct me. Just an example of why you should take the OCA “news” report with more than a grain of salt. It took from 2001 to now to get agreement on "Pasture Access" between all the members of the NOSB and then all of the departments within the USDA. This “high priority” issue took 9 years to get from “Recommendation” to “Policy”. (This is good - it took the FDA 11 years to agree on the legal definition of peanut butter).

We need uniform standards for organic cosmetics. It is also imperative that we continue to support the use of as many organic ingredients in cosmetics as possible. I just don’t think it will happen in the next few years as the result of the NOP. I believe that the NOP’s clear message that personal care is not a priority, as was stated during the meeting:

1. did not come from the program director but rather, represents the position of the Department of AGRICULTURE,
2. is a message to the industry to move forward with private standards which will only help any future efforts to write either an FDA or an NOP PC Standard,
3. is also a message to the cosmetic industry to make some of it’s own progress instead of waiting for the wheels of government to grind down their slow path.

The issues that need to be resolved in the NOP are highly complex and may start with this: that until the NOSB has submitted and the NOP has agreed to final, working definitions of "synthetic”, “non-synthetic”, and “non-agricultural", we cannot make ANY progress on a standard that depends on synthesis chemistry.

Then we need to define what we are certifying - I realize that NOSB set a proposed definition of "personal care" in their recommendation but it may be in conflict with FDA law - which includes things like brushes, candles, neti pots, nail clippers, and anything else sold for "personal" "care" in their legal view of that phrase.

Of course then there is the issue of safety - I would never use a product preserved with 15% alcohol, not on my body and especially not on a child. We have to deal with this. Alcohol is one of the few things that really can act as a transdermal carrier.

So - yes Mr. Bronner and the folks at OCA, after these and many other issues have been resolved, we may be able to move towards enforcement and standards writing, but this will take years. It is impossible to enforce laws that don’t exist;

In the meantime, we still have do not have retailers requiring any sort of certification (except "Natural - which does us no good). There are years of work facing the NOP and the NOSB needs to decide if animal cruelty, existing standards recommendations, certifier training, bio-diversity and food safety should be prioritized before or after personal care.

Folks - this is not going to happen any time soon. 74% of OTA members in the PC biz are not even certified and many of them would not meet the requirements and probably could not sustain their businesses if they did. And that is only OTA members. So let's add this question: in the worst recession we have seen since the “Great Depression” (why do they call it “great”?), is the NOP going to tell thousands of small businesses that they cannot do what they have been doing without some sort of long term lead up (like we did with food)?

We need a strategic path to get people into the fold of certification. This was the first volley across the bow by the NOSB and, as they even stated, it is intended to start a conversation, one that will go through the multi-year process of analyzing the industry. There is a lot of work to be done here. And most of us already have jobs. I continue to believe that we are all responsible for creating and enacting a long term strategic plan that will allow people to get certified, develop the necessary supporting infrastructure and do this thoughtfully. Sorry - it just takes a long time. It took organic food 40 years. It does not have to take the cosmetics industry that long but with the continued barriers being thrown up, it may.