US organic business coalition Organic Voices is turning up the heat on natural brands that benefit from a health halo but “don’t pay the entrance fee” of organic certification.
The group, which brings together around 70 organic companies, is launching a new $1.5 million campaign that aims to cut “consumer confusion” over the difference between organic and other competing claims and labels.
The new messaging forms part of the Gro Organic (Generate Results and Opportunity for Organic) initiative being co-ordinated by the Organic Trade Association. GRO Organic is a voluntary, industry-funded organic research, promotion and education check-off program set up by the OTA after the the US Department of Agriculture last year unexpectedly terminated work on plans for a federally mandated organic check-off program.
Talking about the new campaign in a video interview with newhope.com, Organic Voices spokesperson and Stonyfield Yogurt founder, Gary Hirshberg, said: “Every single organic company has a non-organic competitor who is pretending and acting nothing but good. But they’re not paying the entrance fee – the costs involved in being fully, certified organic. Meanwhile farmers in those sectors are paid below the cost they can make money on and there are massive amounts of herbicides in that system. It is time for us all to say something and for consumers who care to know organic is the real deal.”
“Every single organic company has a non-organic competitor who is pretending and acting nothing but good. But they’re not paying the entrance fee – the costs involved in being fully, certified organic”
Earlier this year, a group of Organic Voices member companies gathered for a two-day retreat to pool ideas on what really motivates people to buy organic. “Twenty companies pored over all the latest consumer research. We know that there are many – hundreds – of reasons for choosing organic. But when we drilled right down we found that the clear number one reason is ‘avoiding toxins’ – the inadvertent exposure to my family and myself to chemicals.”
This key finding directly informed the new campaign which is based around the strapline ‘Skip the chemicals and just go with organic’. The campaign has also been placing advertisements that list in full the 700 chemicals used in conventional food and farming that are prohibited under US organic rules.
The new campaign is the latest by Organic Voices, which seeks to shine a light on the ‘natural’ claim, which is increasingly seen in the US as a food industry equivalent of greenwashing. Previous campaigns include a series of videos that set out to reveal the “shocking truth about what is allowed in ‘Natural’ food”.