Laufer is convinced that organic fraud is common - but his book doesn't actually uncover much evidence of it. "And there is competition among the 'certifiers.' So you can imagine, if the inspection is a little harsh, the company or the farm could say, 'Hey, there are other places I can do business with that wouldn't put me through this kind of rigor.' " The companies that inspect organic farmers and processors, and certify their products as organic "are paid by those that they certify," he says. The second is a conflict of interest that's built into the system, at least in the U.S. Laufer says that's the first reason to distrust organic food. "It seems to me if everything is clean as a whistle, then you'd be proud to say where the food came from." He had a hard time getting answers, which made him even more suspicious.
As he recounts in his new book, Organic: A Journalist's Quest to Discover the Truth Behind Food Labeling, he interrogated store managers, distributors and the company that certified the beans as organic. So Laufer tried to find out exactly where those products came from. "I've done a lot of work in the former Soviet bloc, and when you look at the 'corrupt-o-meter,' it doesn't get much worse than Kazakhstan," he says. Two products recently caught Laufer's attention when they showed up in his kitchen: a can of organic black beans from Bolivia and a bag of organic walnuts, which turned out to be rancid, labeled "Product of Kazakhstan." "It just screams to my perhaps prejudiced, cynical, journalist's mind: Is there anything wrong with this?" Laufer says. imports organic soybeans from China, spices from India, and dried fruits from Turkey. And also because those products are arriving through supply chains that stretch to far corners of the world. He's an outright skeptic, especially because the organic label seems to him like a license to raise prices. Peter Laufer, a writer and professor of journalism at the University of Oregon, doesn't just wonder. Maybe you've wondered, while looking at the price tag on some organic produce, whether that label is telling the truth.
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