Keith Jones,
Director,
National Organic Program USDA, AMS, TM, NOP
1400 Independence Ave., SW,
Room 4008 So., Ag Stop 0268
Washington, D.C. 20250

Dear Mr. Jones, We are joining with others calling on the National Organic Program (NOP) to implement the Peer Review Panel.
After 40 years of hard work, the U.S. organic community has built up a healthy, sustainable, and equitable multi-billion dollar alternative to energy and chemical-intensive industrial agriculture.
Now a number of large so-called "organic" corporations and foreign importers, aided and abetted by unscrupulous certifiers and their sub-contractors, are violating the letter and the spirit of organic integrity, allowing factory farm production and bogus, at times toxic, "organic" imports from countries like China to degrade the "USDA Organic" label.

As you yourselves at the NOP have admitted on your website for the past six years, "The National Organic Standards call for the Administrator of AMS (USDA Agricultural Marketing Service) to appoint members of a Peer Review Panel to evaluate the NOP's adherence to its accreditation procedures and its accreditation decisions."

It's time for the USDA National Organic Program to stop dragging its heels and begin the legally required public process to set up an accountable and transparent organic community "Peer Review Panel."

We obviously need this Safeguard Organic Standards Panel more than ever so that we can start helping the NOP (obviously under funded and understaffed with a meager annual budget to police a giant industry) carry out its important task of monitoring and policing organic producers, importers, and certifiers.

Sincerely,

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