Would Cornucopia consider a scorecard rating organic certifiers?
The USDA’s oversight of organic certifying agents, through its accreditation program, is a broken system. Congress designated the USDA with the responsibility to oversee an accreditation program to make sure that consumers and ethical organic farmers are protected, but the agency has failed in this regard. An analysis and audit done by the American National Standards Institute, a few years ago, was damning in their criticism of how the USDA was doing its job. We’ve had many requests to come up with a comprehensive rating system for certifiers, and have recently taken a close look at organic certifiers in China, but our present funding and staffing levels have prevented a rating scorecard for certifiers from being higher on our ‘to-do’ list. It’s something that we are currently studying and continue to be interested in.
