Spin Cycle: Label Anxiety

When you consider that the green marketplace, for food at least, has reached $30 billion, it's easy to believe that, as one New York Times columnist put it, living and thinking "green" has hit Main Street. And as the bandwagons, hybrids of course, start rolling through town, it's also easy to believe that their heightened visibility will lead to a little road rage.

Take retail behemoth Wal-Mart's well-publicized embrace of organic products and their efforts to green their business with LED-lit product displays, solar-powered stores, hybrid shipping fleets and a goal of selling 100 million, energy-saving compact-fluorescent light bulbs every year. They've even used their marketing muscle to pressure manufacturers into using less packaging and fewer chemicals that harm the environment.

Despite the company's ability to bring an eco conscience to the masses, however, critics have questioned its intentions and the credibility of its claims. Last fall, the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) called for a boycott of Wal-Mart based on its practice of buying organic produce from overseas, and its sale of organic dairy products from Horizon and Aurora, both of which have been accused of factory farm practices. The Cornucopia Group, a farm policy research organization, found mislabeling in Wal-Mart stores throughout Texas and the Midwest. For instance, Stonyfield Farm's yogurt, made with conventional milk, was identified as "organic" on some store shelves.

Karen Burk, a representative for Wal-Mart, told The Green Guide that all Wal-Mart's organic produce, excepting only bananas, was sourced in the U.S. and that "working with local suppliers is very important to us." "We have sent procedural guidelines to our stores for proper management of these identification tags," she says of Cornucopia's charges, "and continue to work with our store associates to have the identifying tags checked periodically for accuracy."

Charges and countercharges aside, this debate suggests that demand for organic products is outpacing the ability of local producers to stay competitive and that the market might be growing too fast for store employees to stay abreast of the issues. Even Whole Foods, which, as author Michael Pollan points out in his book The Omnivore's Dilemma (Penguin, 2006, $26.95) is decorated with serene images of happy, pastured animals, stocks Horizon dairy products in some stores. However, Pollan's book sparked a lively online exchange between him and the store chain's CEO, John Mackey, and the debate, combined with consumer pressure, resulted in the company giving store managers discretion to remove Horizon products from individual store shelves. Furthermore, Trader Joe's allegedly imports organics from China and South America.

"It's still very important that organic is becoming mainstream and that it's becoming the new paradigm for food and farming," says Ronnie Cummins, OCA president. But, he adds, "we need to call people back to the ideals and principles that the organic movement began with and focus on local and regional production."