5 Nonorganic Exceptions Ruffle Enthusiasts of Organic Food

By ANDREW MARTIN

Published: June 11, 2007

The latest battle over what can be called organic involves beer and gelatin, food colorings and casings for sausage. The Department of Agriculture, the final arbiter of all things organic, is poised to approve a list of nonorganic ingredients that can be used in food stamped with its green-and-white organic seal.

The list includes hops for beer, dill weed oil for flavoring pickles, and elderberry juice coloring for making foods bright red to blue purple. There is also chia, an herb from Central America that is used in some baked goods, and fructooligosaccharides, a bulking agent that adds fiber.

In all, the organic advisory board to the Agriculture Department recommended that 38 nonorganic ingredients be added to a list of approved ingredients. Rules on organic labeling dictate that 95 percent of a product must be organic to obtain the department’s label; the remaining 5 percent can be nonorganic if it comes from an approved list.

To get on the approved list, an organic alternative to the ingredient must not be commercially available.

But purists say that this list of ingredients is the latest example of big business trying to water down organic standards in an effort to cash in on the increased demand for organic products. They argue that allowing the nonorganic ingredients will weaken the integrity of the organic label.

“More than 90 percent of the food/agricultural items on the proposed list of materials in this rule are items that can easily be grown organically,” said Merrill A. Clark, an organic farmer from Michigan and a former member of the organic advisory board, in comments to the Agriculture Department.

She said that allowing such nonorganic ingredients are “totally unhealthy for the organic industry down the road,” and are “opening the organic rules to ridicule and unflattering public exposure.”

Jill M. Cataldo of Huntley, Ill., told the Agriculture Department that her family ate only organic beef to avoid exposure to mad cow disease and other health risks. But she questioned the integrity of organic sausage that would be wrapped in nonorganic casings made from the intestines of animals that can be fed such things as bovine growth hormones.

Organic crops are grown without the use of chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Similarly, organic meat comes from animals that are not injected with growth hormones or fed antibiotics.

The ingredients in dispute are already being used in organic products. But two years ago, a federal court ruled that the Agriculture Department had to approve each nonorganic agricultural product that was being used in organic food.

Previously, nonorganic agricultural products could be used as long as a certifying agent agreed that that they were not available as organic, at least not in the form, quality or quantity needed.

The court gave manufacturers two years to find an organic alternative or to petition the Agriculture Department to include the ingredients on a list of approved nonorganic agricultural products. The deadline was Friday, and the department was expected to make a decision by then.

Officials at the Department of Agriculture could not be reached for comment Sunday. Andrea M. Caroe, the chairwoman of the advisory board, said she expected a decision within days. Even if the list is approved, she said, manufacturers would still need to show that the ingredients were not available in organic form.

For instance, she said hops were included on the list because there is a large variety and some are not grown organically in adequate quantity for beer brewers.

John Foraker, chief executive of Annie’s Homegrown, argued that nonorganic annatto was a crucial ingredient in the company’s macaroni and cheese. “Organic annatto is not readily available and does not deliver the same cheese color,” he said in a May 14 letter to the Agriculture Department. “Making orange colored macaroni and cheese is an important element of our offering. Without annatto, our macaroni-and-cheese products would be white.”

Mark Sammartino, a brew master at Anheuser-Busch, said the company used four varieties of hops that were not available in organic form for two new varieties of beer: Organic Wild Hop Lager and Organic Stone Mill Pale Ale. The hops “represent unique flavor and aroma characteristics due to variation in essential oils,” he wrote in a petition to the Agriculture Department that was received in January.

The fact that Anheuser-Busch may get an exemption rankled many organic food adherents.

“Hops are a crucial ingredient for beer. Why can’t they use organic hops?” said James A. Riddle, an organic consultant and a former chairman of the organic advisory board.

Mr. Riddle also complained that manufacturers had two years to petition for nonorganic ingredients to be allowed in organic products. But the advisory board allowed only seven days for public comments once they had posted the list of 38 recommended ingredients.

6. WHERE DID ALL THE HONEYBEES GO?
Article published Sunday, June 10, 2007
Colony-collapse disorder, stress among threats to pollinators

By JENNI LAIDMAN
BLADE SCIENCE WRITER

Consider the life of the modern honeybee.

In fall, she and her buzzing colony — along with hundreds of other hives in Lyle Keller’s care — prepare to winter in Florida. In the dark tractor-trailer, she travels nearly 1,000 miles from Arcadia in Seneca County to a winter home on a farm near Daytona Beach.

The brief winter respite is over in February when the hive is moved to the orange groves for pollination work.

Of course, our original bee is dead by this time, her four to seven-week adult life span over. But her sisters move on to work the apple orchards near Lake Erie, then on to cucumbers, pumpkins, and melons.

The 2,000 miles logged by Mr. Keller’s honeybees each year are nothing exceptional. Since the 1960s, thousands of bee colonies have taken to the road, following the crops like insect migrant workers, providing pollination critical for the development of more than 100 commercially grown North American crops.

But this essential migrant work force is in grave trouble. Battered by invading mites since 1987, honeybees now face another threat. It’s called colony-collapse disorder, and scientists believe it has killed 25 percent of honeybees in the United States.

Mr. Keller took 1,000 bee hives to Florida last year. Varroa mites and the vagaries of weather and transport killed 60 percent of them. He’s rebuilding what he has lost, splitting colonies into new hives for the pollination work.

But he keeps an eye to the horizon for this new problem.

“Right now I got 800, 900 hives sitting around here I’m trying to get ready for the pickles coming up in July. If this thing hits, all these bees could be dead.”

There is something eerie about colony-collapse disorder.

One day, the bees are there, the hive electric with frantic activity. The next day, the next week, they’re gone. The queen remains. Larval bees curl in their golden cells. Plentiful honey fills the orderly hexagons. But the workers are no more. Not even their bodies remain.

Normally, a hive so abandoned would be robbed by neighboring colonies and small hive beetles. But like the treasure-laden ship struck by bubonic plague, no one will plunder here. They wait perhaps for some chemical all-clear signal before they’ll touch what’s left behind.

Colony-collapse disorder has reached at least 35 states, including Ohio, since it appeared last fall.

Assessing the impact

Impact in Ohio is unclear. One survey led by a Pennsylvania State University researcher found 35 percent of the 47 Ohio beekeepers polled experienced colony-collapse disorder. The researchers found no cases of the disorder in Michigan.

However, Ohio’s bee experts say CCD has little effect here.

“I would say 95 percent of the loss in Ohio this last winter is something other than CCD,” said John Grafton, the state apiarist who oversees the honeybee inspection program for Ohio.

Still, there is little doubt that colony-collapse disorder could become a problem.

“If they had it in California, it won’t be long until they have it here,” Mr. Keller said. “There’s guys hauling bees from Michigan, Florida, and Georgia [to California]. Them bees are all back East now.”

Where the disorder strikes, it’s devastating.

“One beekeeper in Montana, he figures he lost 75 percent of his operation” to colony-collapse disorder, said Jerry Bromenshenk, a professor at the University of Montana.

The keeper had just trucked his bees to the California almond groves this spring when the colonies collapsed.

Mr. Bromenshenk said: “He figures he lost $1.2 million this year. He said, ‘If it happens again next year, I know where I’m going to be. I’m going to be out of the bee business.’”

The cause of the plague is unknown. Scientists are attempting to investigate every reasonable suspect. Mr. Bromenshenk’s group looks at chemicals in bee colonies. Others look for a connection between low-level pesticides and immune-system weakness. Still others scan the bees genome for clues.

They study every ailment known to bees — varroa mites, fungi, viruses, bacteria, and parasites — and hunt for plagues yet unknown.

Despite the range of suspects, most researchers are united on one theme: Whatever deals the final blow to these bees, something else may perform a critical assist — stress. Aider and a better of disease, it may set the stage for the coup de grace.

“There are at least three or four areas the stress is coming from. We’re not sure which is most important, or [whether it’s] some combination,” said Jeff Pettis of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Bee Research Lab in Beltsville, Md.

Temperature changes, the poor diet of bees forced to forage on a single crop, pesticides, the varroa mite, or the modern lifestyle of bees may all contribute.

“We’re really pushing these bees hard,” Mr. Bromenshenk said. “One person somewhat facetiously said, ‘Maybe they’re just tired.’”

Mr. Bromenshenk stops his rapid-fire bee disquisition for a beat.

“There may be some truth to that,” he concludes.

Changing times

The life of modern bees is not the one they evolved for.

First beekeeping pushed the bees to make more honey, Mr. Bromenshenk said. Then 40 years ago, beekeepers began hauling bees long distances. Finally, three years ago, Mr. Bromenshenk said, “We started moving them coast to coast.”

California almond growers were desperate for bees, and the crop, worth about $2,000 per acre, could make long-distance travel pay.

Two things were at work in this new wave of bee migration: the rapid expansion of the almond groves and the instability of the honeybee population.

“We no longer have the buffer [of excess bees] we used to have,” said James Tew of the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center Honey Bee Lab in Wooster.

Varroa mites and, to a lesser degree, tracheal mites, contributed to a dramatic decline in bee numbers.

In the mid 1940s, the United States was home to nearly 6 million managed bee colonies. In 1985, numbers were lower, though still strong, at about 4.5 million colonies. Then the mites hit. By 2005, only 2.4 million managed bee colonies remained, according to the USDA. Little is known about what happened to wild honeybee populations, but evidence suggests many colonies were wiped out.

“CCD is a crisis on top of a crisis,” said May Berenbaum, the head of the entomology department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Honeybees were having problems before CCD emerged. Pollinators in general are having problems. One reason we coped before is we used to have a reserve of wild pollinators.”

Now, many wild pollinators are in trouble. But even if they were healthy, few would be useful in almond groves. Honeybees are one of the few long-distance fliers capable of penetrating a vast grove, not just working the edges.

At the same time bee numbers have shrunk, almond-tree plantings increased. According to a report by the National Academy of Sciences released this year, almond acreage rose nearly 70 percent from 1980 to 2005. Every spring, a half-million acres of almond trees need 1.4 million bee colonies. By 2012, California’s Almond Board projects, expansion will require more than 2 million bee colonies.

“The rental value of pollination of almonds went from $35 to $40 a colony to as high as $135 in a single month,” Mr. Bromenshenk said. “This most recent February, they were up to $150 to $165, with a few reports of growers paying $200 a colony.

“Suddenly it became economically feasible to move bees from East Coast to West Coast,” he said.

Search for culprits

While this transport may be a source of stress, such well-traveled bees are not the only ones to succumb to colony-collapse disorder, Mr. Bromenshenk said.

“Large beekeepers and small, beekeepers who move their bees and beekeepers who don’t, beekeepers doing organic and nonorganic, those who throw everything allowed at mites — chemicals and so on — and those that don’t. Across the board, it makes no difference,’’ he said. “All are susceptible to CCD.”

That adds to the confusion. In absence of any clear distinguishing factor among colony-collapse disorder hives, researchers are forced to painstakingly rule out a multitude of potential killers, comparing the remains of the abandoned hives, the combs, the brood, the queens, to hives not troubled by the disorder.

Although scientists carefully avoid the word “disease,” signs point to the work of a pathogen.

Mr. Pettis’ team continues research in which some colony- collapse disorder hive boxes are irradiated and then stocked with a new colony. Other CCD boxes are not treated. Preliminary results showed better survival among the bees in irradiated hives, but the tests are ongoing and results not yet conclusive, Mr. Pettis cautions.

If a pathogen is involved, it could be an invasive pest — as the varroa mite was — brought here from another ecosystem. In 2005, a ban on honeybee importation was lifted to meet the demands of the almond crop. A few cast suspicious eyes in that direction, although, again, there is no evidence of an association.

Some believe colony collapse disorder is an old enemy exploiting a new vulnerability. Bee-vanishing episodes have occurred sporadically for decades.

“I’m guessing it’s something that’s been in bee operations a long time and we never got a fix on it,’’ Mr. Bromenshenk said. He speculates it cycles in and out of bee populations in times of drought or other stress.

The big picture