January, 23 2012, 09:54am EDT
Largest Corporate Dairy, Biotech Firm and USDA Accused of Conspiring to Corrupt Rulemaking and Pollute Organics
Watchdog Requests Federal Investigation, Files Ethics Charges
WASHINGTON
The Cornucopia Institute, an organic industry research and watchdog organization, announced it has formally requested the USDA's Office of Inspector General (OIG) to investigate corruption at its National Organic Program resulting in the use of illegal synthetics in organic food and then allowing powerful corporations to "game the system" for approval "after the fact."
The controversy surrounds products developed by Martek Biosciences Corporation. Martek, part of a $12 billion Dutch-based conglomerate, recently petitioned for approval of its genetically modified soil fungus and algae as nutritional supplements in organic food.
Martek's formulated oils are processed with synthetic petrochemical solvents in a blend containing a myriad of other synthetic chemicals. Supplements derived from these oils, commonly marketed as DHA and ARA, are being added to milk, infant formula and other organic foods by such companies as Dean Foods (Horizon), Abbott Laboratories (Similac) and Nurture, Inc. (Happy Baby).
"This is a long-standing controversy that the USDA seems to think is just going to go away," said Mark A. Kastel, Codirector of the Wisconsin-based Cornucopia Institute.
After a formal legal complaint by Cornucopia, and an investigative story by the Washington Post, the USDA announced in April 2010 that it had "inappropriately" allowed Martek oils to be included in organic foods.
The scandal contributed to the removal of the previous director of the National Organic Program (NOP), who overruled her staff's decision finding Martek supplements were illegal in organics--after she met with a prominent Washington lobbyist, William J. Friedman.
The former NOP director's decision was reversed in April 2010. But instead of immediately ordering the removal of these unapproved synthetics from organic food, the Obama/Vilsack administration at the USDA delayed enforcement by 18 months in an apparent effort to permit corporate lobbyists to properly petition for review and possibly legal inclusion in organic food.
"It's unacceptable that these materials are still in organic food and that corporations think they can manipulate the system and get away with it," said Kastel. "It's even worse because, according to our research and reports at the FDA, some babies have become ill after consuming Martek supplements in infant formula."
In December, the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB), the expert panel set up by Congress to advise the USDA Secretary on organic matters, narrowly approved the Martek petitions for their patented versions of DHA and ARA. "All hell broke loose at the meeting in Savannah as the controversy grew extremely heated," Kastel noted.
In their complaint to the OIG, Cornucopia alleges that Martek misrepresented their novel, synthetic product and manipulated the vote by the NOSB.
"Martek oils, marketed under the Life'sDHA(tm) brand and included in organic infant formula, milk and baby food, are processed with petrochemical solvents like hexane or isopropyl alcohol, both of which are explicitly banned in organic production," stated Charlotte Vallaeys, Director of Farm and Food Policy at Cornucopia.
Although Martek told the board that they would discontinue the use of the controversial neurotoxic solvent n-hexane for DHA/ARA processing, they did not disclose what other synthetic solvents would be substituted. Federal organic standards prohibit the use of all synthetic/petrochemical solvents, including isopropyl alcohol, which is currently used to extract DHA algal oil for use in products such as Horizon milk.
Martek again brought in William "Jay" Friedman, with the powerful Washington law firm of Covington and Burling, to lead their approval process. Friedman appeared to deliberately mislead NOSB members into believing that the powdered form of Martek's DHA oil was not covered in the petition. This particular product formulation uses microencapsulation (banned in organics) and includes a number of additional synthetic materials that have never been reviewed or approved for use in organics.
When asked by NOSB Board chairperson, Tracy Miedema, "Are we approving dried powder or just oil?" Friedman stated on the record, "I can answer that. That's not the petitioned material."
Friedman's statement was inconsistent with Martek's formal petition to the NOSB, which states that "the petitioned material is unchanged from that which was authorized previously," referring to the USDA's earlier corrupted authorization of all Martek's products, including the powdered form.
"Mr. Friedman's statement thus appears patently false in an apparent attempt to intentionally mislead the NOSB. This apparent subterfuge led, in turn, to the NOSB's failure to review other aspects of these materials which would have disqualified them, under law, for inclusion in organic food," Cornucopia's Kastel said.
In addition to the letter to the OIG, Cornucopia has requested the D.C. Bar conduct a formal ethics investigation of Mr. Friedman's conduct.
"The dog and pony show put on by Martek and their largest customer, Dean Foods, was without precedent in the organic industry," said Alexis Baden-Mayer, Political Director of the Organic Consumers Association, who was present in Savannah.
The only scientists who testified at the meeting on the DHA issue were all on Martek's payroll, and focused on research showing benefits of consuming naturally occurring omega-3 fatty acids (such as those found in fish and breast milk), while ignoring the preponderance of published peer-reviewed research that shows that these health benefits are not gained from consuming Martek's novel, manufactured DHA additive.
The written statements of leading scientists in this field, who did not attend the meeting but whose findings were presented to the Board members, including assertions that this field of research is "driven to a large extent by enthusiasm and vested interest," were overpowered by the handful of corporate-sponsored scientists with a blatant financial interest in the outcome of the vote.
Dean Foods, Martek's largest customer, brought in a well-known web-pediatrician, Dr. Alan Greene, who has acted as a public relations agent endorsing Horizon brand organic milk with the added Martek DHA oils.
Although Dr. Greene represented himself as a "consultant," simply answering questions for Dean Foods, and stated he had previously worked for two other organic companies, but failed to disclose his multiple conflicts of interest in commenting on the benefits of Martek's manufactured DHA supplements.
Greene has also accepted compensation from Mead Johnson, the largest conventional infant formula manufacturer, to promote Martek's DHA oil in their products, and even has his own product line of nutritional supplements that include Martek DHA, marketed by Twinlabs with his name and photograph on the product package.
"It is unconscionable that a physician, who accepted money from a big drug company to promote synthetic DHA--which many believes promotes the use of baby formula at the expense of the nutrients in breast feeding--failed to disclose such a gross conflict of interest when he testified before the governmental body on certified 'organic' standards," said Lisa Graves, Executive Director of the Center for Media and Democracy/PRWatch, which helps expose corporate PR tactics.
Greene's role on behalf of Dean Foods and Martek was to directly dispute the preponderance of scientific literature, including two meta-analyses, that discredits Martek's claims that their supplements promote cognitive development in infants and children.
Cornucopia's complaint to the OIG also included evidence documenting that three corporate-backed members of the NOSB, who voted in favor of this petition, had undeclared conflicts of interest.
Two of the board members work for Earthbound Farms, a giant produce distributor that also compensated Dr. Greene during 2011. A third member of the NOSB board works for General Mills which partnered with Martek, starting in 2009, on the technology to microencapsulate their DHA and ARA oils.
Cornucopia said that these board members should have considered recusing themselves from voting on this issue because of the apparent conflicts of interest. One of the members was the prime champion of the Martek petition during board deliberations.
Adding fuel to the controversy, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) just announced the end of its investigation into Dean Foods' advertising campaign for Horizon DHA supplemented milk, forcing the dairy giant to alter claims in its advertising concerning "brain development or function, cognitive development or function, intelligence, learning abilities in children over the age of two." This action resulted from a complaint filed by The Cornucopia Institute based on its research of the fraudulent and misleading health claims.
"While they did not fine Dean, or its WhiteWave division, for its misrepresentations in Horizon marketing, we are pleased that the FTC has taken this action to protect children and prevent the defrauding of their parents," said Vallaeys.
Although the FDA has dismissed complaints about the safety of Martek products in infant formula, reports persist from parents and healthcare providers of infants who experience serious gastrointestinal symptoms from consuming Martek's DHA and ARA oils in infant formula, raising serious public health questions about the marketing of these products.
The Cornucopia Institute has sent a formal briefing paper on these matters to all members of the National Organic Standards Board.
Cornucopia contends that the board did not fulfill its legal responsibilities of due diligence, and instead solely accepted unsubstantiated statements by Martek that their products were not genetically engineered and were not "synthetic."
"We are asking the NOSB to reopen their deliberations and consider rescinding their approval of Martek nutritional oils," Kastel added. "If the board fails to act now, protecting the integrity of organics, it risks changing the working definition of the organic seal and degrading its value in the eyes of consumers."
The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit farm policy research group, is dedicated to the fight for economic justice for the family-scale farming community. Their Organic Integrity Project acts as a corporate and governmental watchdog assuring that no compromises to the credibility of organic farming methods and the food it produces are made in the pursuit of profit.
LATEST NEWS
'All Are Now Vulnerable': Legal Scholars Alarmed as DOJ Begins Push to Denaturalize Citizens
"Anyone could be prioritized," a spokesperson for the ACLU told Common Dreams. "It's really chilling."
Jul 01, 2025
As the Trump administration has begun the push to strip citizenship from foreign-born Americans, legal scholars and advocates are calling it a dangerous step toward using citizenship as a political weapon.
On June 11, the U.S. Department of Justice issued an internal memo written by Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate calling on DOJ attorneys to pursue "civil denaturalization" of foreign-born U.S. citizens.
"The Civil Division shall prioritize and maximally pursue denaturalization proceedings in all cases permitted by law and supported by the evidence," the memo said, adding that it should be among the division's top five priorities.
It suggested a wide variety of citizens who could be targeted for denaturalization. This includes perpetrators of violent offenses like "torture, war crimes, or other human rights violations." But it also targets much broader groups of people such as those "who pose a potential danger to national security" or those who "acquired naturalization through government corruption, fraud, or material misrepresentations."
It also calls for "any other cases referred to the Civil Division that the division determines to be sufficiently important to pursue."
Naureen Shah, director of government affairs for the ACLU's Equality Division, told Common Dreams that "it's another devastating attack by the Trump administration on people who they want to cast as not belonging here."
The memo's vague language has Shah and other legal scholars warning that denaturalization could become a tool to deport political opponents, an effort that would be harder for courts to stop following Friday's ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, which hamstrung the ability of lower courts to stop illegal actions by the Trump administration using injunctions.
Joyce Vance, a former United States Attorney, who is now a law professor and a legal analyst for MSNBC and NBC, warned Tuesday about the possible implications on her blog Civil Discourse:
"It could be exercising First Amendment rights or encouraging diversity in hiring, now recast as fraud against the United States. Troublesome journalists who are naturalized citizens? Students? University professors? Infectious disease doctors who try to reveal the truth about epidemics? Lawyers?" Vance wrote. "All are now vulnerable to the vagaries of an administration that has shown a preference for deporting people without due process and dealing with questions that come up after the fact and with a dismissive tone."
"Anyone could be prioritized," Shah said. "It's really chilling."
Cassandra Robertson, a law professor at Case Western University, told NPR that it was "especially concerning" that the administration would plan to pursue denaturalization through civil court.
"Civil denaturalization cases provide no right to an attorney, meaning defendants without resources often face the government without representation," she wrote in a 2019 study on the history of denaturalization along with her colleague Irina Manta. "There are no jury trials, with judges making citizenship determinations alone. The burden of proof is 'clear and convincing evidence' rather than the criminal standard of 'beyond a reasonable doubt.' Additionally, there is no statute of limitations, allowing the government to build cases on decades-old evidence that may be incomplete or unreliable."
Robertson said Trump's approach mirrors that undertaken during the McCarthy era, when those deemed "un-American" were stripped of citizenship due to their political views.
"At the height of denaturalization, there were about 22,000 cases a year of denaturalization filed, and this was on a smaller population. It was huge," she said.
The Supreme Court stepped in to reel back denaturalization in 1967, determining that, in Robertson's words, it was "inconsistent with the American form of democracy, because it creates two levels of citizenship." After that, the number of denaturalization cases plummeted to the single digits each year. The Trump administration seems to be hoping to reverse that trend.
Republican politicians have not been shy about calling for their political opponents to be stripped of citizenship. Last week, following Zohran Mamdani's shocking victory in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) called for the Ugandan-born state assemblyman to be stripped of his U.S. citizenship and "deported," referring to him as an "antisemitic, socialist, communist."
Ogles accused Mamdani of failing to disclose his political "affiliations or sympathies" during the process that led him to become a citizen in 2018. He singled out Mamdani's support for the Holy Land Foundation, whose leaders were convicted in a widely criticized "terrorism financing" case in 2008. Notably, the leaders of the group were never accused of directly funding terrorist groups or terrorist acts.
On Monday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked about Ogles' call to deport Mamdani, and she did not shoot down the idea.
"I have not seen those claims, but surely if they are true, it's something that should be investigated," Leavitt said.
It was not the first time Republicans have called to deport leaders in the other party explicitly for their political views.
In June, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier called for the Trump administration to "deport and denaturalize" Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who came to the U.S. as a refugee from Somalia, after she criticized President Donald Trump's deployment of the military to quash protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Los Angeles.
The Trump administration has already targeted lawful immigrants with deportation purely for their political views. In March, the administration abducted and attempted to deport pro-Palestine student activist Mahmoud Khalil, explicitly because he was a "threat to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States," similar language to what the DOJ now says is justification for denaturalization. The administration has also attempted to deport others, like Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk, for as little as co-writing an op-ed calling on her university to divest from Israel.
"The way the memo is written, there is no guarantee DOJ will pursue cases against violent criminals," Vance said. "They could just do easy cases to ratchet up numbers, like we're seeing with deportation. Or they could target people who, they view as troublemakers."
There are more than 25 million people in the United States who are naturalized citizens.
"They should not have to live in fear that they'll lose their rights," Shah said.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Senate Tosses 'Dangerous Provision' Preventing State-Level AI Regulation From GOP Megabill
"From the start, this provision had Big Tech's money and lobbyists all over it. This is a major victory for the American people over the AI industry," said one advocate.
Jul 01, 2025
With a 99-1 vote early Tuesday, the Republican-controlled Senate decided to remove a controversial provision that would have prevented state-level regulation on artificial intelligence for 10 years from U.S. President Donald Trump's massive tax and spending bill that is currently being debated in Congress.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) was the lone lawmaker who voted to keep the moratorium in the bill.
While far from the only controversial part of the reconciliation package, the provision drew opposition from an ideologically diverse group that included Democratic and Republican state attorneys general; over 140 groups working to support children's online safety, consumer protections, and responsible innovation; and faith leaders.
Senators struck Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-Texas) AI measure from the megabill by adopting an amendment introduced by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.). They voted on Blackburn's amendment during a session known as a vote-a-rama. Blackburn introduced the amendment after considering an agreement that would have watered down the provision.
According to The Verge, the measure that was rejected on Tuesday required states to avoid regulation AI and "automated decision systems" if they wanted to get funding for their broadband programs.
The provision would have been a major win for Big Tech, which has made the case that state laws around AI are obstructing their ability to do business.
Advocates and Democratic lawmakers cheered the decision to strip the provision.
"From the start, this provision had Big Tech's money and lobbyists all over it. This is a major victory for the American people over the AI industry. It shows that Americans are aware of the proliferation of AI harms in real time," said J.B. Branch, Big Tech accountability advocate at the watchdog group Public Citizen.
Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) said Tuesday that "early this morning, the Senate overwhelmingly voted to reject a dangerous provision to block states from regulating artificial intelligence, including protecting kids online. This 99-1 vote sent a clear message that Congress will not sell out our kids and local communities in order to pad the pockets of Big Tech billionaires."
In addition to concerns focused on Big Tech, experts recently told The Guardian that in the absence of state-level AI regulation, untrammeled growth of AI would take a toll on the world's "dangerously overheating climate."
Sacha Haworth, the executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, credited the "massive" defeat of Cruz's provision to the "incredible mobilizing by advocates to beat back Big Tech lobbying and last-minute bullying."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Critics Shred JD Vance as He Shrugs Off Millions of Americans Losing Medicaid as 'Minutiae'
"What happened to you J.D. Vance—author of Hillbilly Elegy—now shrugging off Medicaid cuts that will close rural hospitals and kick millions off healthcare as 'minutiae?'" asked Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.).
Jul 01, 2025
Vice President J.D. Vance took heat from critics this week when he downplayed legislation that would result in millions of Americans losing Medicaid coverage as mere "minutiae."
Writing on X, Vance defended the budget megabill that's currently being pushed through the United States Senate by arguing that it will massively increase funding to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which he deemed to be a necessary component of carrying out the Trump administration's mass deportation operation.
"The thing that will bankrupt this country more than any other policy is flooding the country with illegal immigration and then giving those migrants generous benefits," wrote Vance. "The [One Big Beautiful Bill] fixes this problem. And therefore it must pass."
He then added that "everything else—the CBO score, the proper baseline, the minutiae of the Medicaid policy—is immaterial compared to the ICE money and immigration enforcement provisions."
It was this line that drew the ire of many critics, as the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the Senate version of the budget bill would slash spending on Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program by more than $1 trillion over a ten-year-period, which would result in more than 10 million people losing their coverage. Additionally, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) has proposed an amendment that would roll back the expansion of Medicaid under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which would likely kick millions more off of the program.
Many congressional Democrats were quick to pounce on Vance for what they said were callous comments about a vital government program.
"So if the only thing that matters is immigration... why didn't you support the bipartisan Lankford-Murphy bill that tackled immigration far better than your Ugly Bill?" asked Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-N.Y.). "And it didn't have 'minutiae' that will kick 12m+ Americans off healthcare or raise the debt by $4tn."
"What happened to you J.D. Vance—author of Hillbilly Elegy—now shrugging off Medicaid cuts that will close rural hospitals and kick millions off healthcare as 'minutiae?'" asked Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.).
Veteran healthcare reporter Jonathan Cohn put some numbers behind the policies that are being minimized by the vice president.
"11.8M projected to lose health insurance," he wrote. "Clinics and hospitals taking a hit, especially in rural areas. Low-income seniors facing higher costs. 'Minutiae.'"
Activist Leah Greenberg, the co-chair of progressive organizing group Indivisible, zeroed in on Vance's emphasis on ramping up ICE's funding as particularly problematic.
"They are just coming right out and saying they want an exponential increase in $$$ so they can build their own personal Gestapo," she warned.
Washington Post global affairs columnist Ishaan Tharoor also found himself disturbed by the sheer size of the funding increase for ICE that Vance is demanding and he observed that "nothing matters more apparently than giving ICE a bigger budget than the militaries of virtually every European country."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular