An addendum; USDA organic, Cascadia (Washington State, Oregon, British Columbia) organic

[solarbird]

kathrynt has suggested that I note that "USDA Organic"-certified products cannot be less than 95% organically-grown foodstuffs, and that as China has no organic certification programme in place, Chinese food materials (including protein sources) are excluded from that 95%. They would be completely excluded from "USDA 100% Organic" products, and that is a separate label.

There are also a variety of state organic certification processes which often have more stringent requirements than the USDA programme. Washington State's is here, and is more strict than USDA general requirements.

Also, while we are not certain about this, we know that in some cases that getting a farm organically certified requires 100% organic practices, which would exclude slop originating from these sources. This may be helpful for those seeking non-contaminated pork sources. For example, Washington State's programme would exclude this type of contaminated pork slop on the basis that it lacks organic certification and that feeding requirements require 100% organic foods.

If anyone more knowledgeable than me plus google could comment on Oregon and British Columbia organic certification programmes, I would appreciate that and would elevate it to top level in this post. Here are summaries of Oregon Tilth and British Columbia Certified Organic standards.

Comments

[firni.livejournal.com]

The government doesn't care:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,269114,00.html

[solarbird]

Well, they did stop most of the pigs from being shipped out, at least. So only the 358 (according to the article) already sent off are in the system. We hope.

[firni.livejournal.com]

Luckily for me, I don't eat pork.

Unluckily for me, my son's favorite "meat" is bacon.