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HilarO
Newbie
Posts:1
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| 05/16/2008 1:12 PM |
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| Retailers, what do you think? Should personal care products have to meet the National Organic Program standards for food in order to be labeled organic? |
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Diana
Newbie
Posts:1
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| 05/24/2008 3:30 PM |
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We have two retail stores and we are in our twelfth year of our retail store operation. We also are certified organic by the state of Maryland and produce many lovely and genuine USDA certified organic personal care products. We are very committed to the USDA National Organic Program and state-run certification programs as we have found no other reliable means to verify the authenticity of certified organic goods of the highest quality.
Because of our personal experience with life-threatening cancer, our search for wellness and to be cancer-free, we are very cautious about products that we bring into our home, rub into our bodies and put into our mouths. Twenty years ago, when we first began to seek a path of recovery from radical chemotherapy and aggressive lymphoma, we were able to find healthy organic foods and easily learned how to live without chemical cleaning products. We were disappointed, however, that we were unable to find basic and effective personal care products that met our criteria for organic quality and that were authentic organic products. We felt that we had no choice but to devote ourselves to researching and formulating and producing real organic products for ourselves and our family and friends and our good customers.
During the course of our 17 years of personal care product ingredients research and our organic certification journey, we were disturbed by what we learned about the polluting intensive chemical manufacturing processes used to produce the conventional and synthetic "all natural" and "organic" personal care product chemical ingredients. We did not wish to use these ingredients on our bodies, or wash them down the drain into our waterways, nor did we wish to see others using them. In addition, as water-based personal care products can be absorbed into the body, we feel that personal care products must be exceptionally pure. For us, this means using traditional ingredients that are of the earth -- ingredients that humans evolved alongside over millions of years and that our bodies recognize and can process/metabolize/excrete. We are of the earth. Like the rich soil that we dig our hands into and use to grow the foods that we eat, it is vital to us that personal care product ingredients are grown as close to nature as possible -- organically -- and that they are minimally processed. The best path that we could find that would give us the assurance that products would be healthier and better for our planet was to seek and utilize ingredients that were USDA compliant.
As retail store owners and a certified organic personal care products producer, we have been fortunate to have personally spoken to and heard from hundreds of intelligent, organically-inclined customers and have heard over and over again that people are very confused by organic labeling and organic certification and certifiers. As a result, we are forced to work very, very hard every day to dispel the personal care "organic" labeling confusion and educate our customers about our USDA National Organic Program regulations -- what the benefits of a USDA organic label are for them and for our environment.
We do not believe that there is a need for other standard(s) for personal care products other than the USDA National Organic Program (NOP). We strongly believe that ANY product that is sold in the USA that makes an "organic" claim must comply with our US federal organic regulations. If personal care product companies or other companies are allowed to continue with their arrogant un-American behavior -- scoffing at our organic law and thinking that they are above the law -- and retailers (who are the marketplace gatekeepers) don't demand better labeling, we are left with the wild west in the personal care marketplace, a meaningless organic law, and drinking water polluted with conventional shampoo surfactant chemicals, chemical preservatives and chemical fragrances.
There are now several manufacturers who are producing a wide range of authentic USDA certified organic products that offer consumers a variety of products to choose from for their personal daily hygiene needs. Retailers that claim to embrace the organic lifestyle and organic foods and who promote their store as better than conventional drugstores, grocery stores and discount stores, need to honestly evaluate their product offerings and be sure that their personal care product offerings are honestly-labeled and truly better than what folks can find in the mass market.
More and more people are becoming aware of what certified organic means and these folks won't be happy to see non-certified "organic" products on your store shelves that they feel are trying to trick them. They may even think that you're not informed, or worse, that you're trying to trick them, too. Our store has NOT suffered because we chose not to fill our shelves with non-USDA certified "organic" products. In fact, by not offering such products we continually open the door to many excellent opportunities to educate organic-minded customers and build a more aware and loyal customer base.
We feel that products that make organic claims on their labels and that are not certified to our federal organic law are misleading and exploit the consumer's trust in our National Organic Program. If this practice is allowed to continue, the integrity and strength of our organic law will certainly be degraded.
We'd also like to point out that, in our stores, and we are a specialty store chain not discount stores (genuine organic products are special!), we do not offer dozens of varieties of personal care products and people never complain that we don't provide enough choices. In fact, to the contrary, we have heard several times over the years that we offer too many choices!
Personal care products AND any other types of products that claim to be "ORGANIC" on their product labels or in their advertising/marketing materials AND THAT ARE SOLD IN THE USA need to be certified to our USA's National Organic Program federal law. We have a law in place that regulates the use of the word "organic" -- doesn't this mean something?
To dispel any rumor that there is no organic certification available for personal care products, take a look at the following important USDA Policy Scope statement from 2005:
http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELPRDC5052491&acct=nopgeninfo
Lastly, to address the myth that some other country (or a cosmetic industry "standards" group) has an organic standard that is better than our own USDA National Organic Program federal law, you owe it to yourself and your customers to take some time to view the extensive NOP regulations at the link below. You will see for yourself that the USA has the most comprehensive and strict organic regulations (more than 500 pages!) in the world:
http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/ams.fetchTemplateData.do?template=TemplateF&navID=RegulationsNOPNationalOrganicProgramHome&rightNav1=RegulationsNOPNationalOrganicProgramHome&topNav=&leftNav=NationalOrganicProgram&page=NOPRegulations&resultType=&acct=noprulemaking
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