FLASH! Spaghetti Crops In Switzerland
On Halloween Eve, 1938, Orson Welles and his colleagues scrambled to pull together the show - they ended up writing Pop Culture History - at its very finest.
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Way back in 1959 when Dwight Eisenhower was President, the BBC aired an "Orson Wells like burlesque" - but this one was not via RCA Victor radios -
- but a TV documentary about spaghetti crops in Switzerland, showing women carefully plucking strands of (100% organic?) spaghetti from a tree and laying them in the sun to dry.
Ever try Sun-baked spaghetti?
Many viewers called to the BBC asking where they could purchase their own spaghetti trees.
Imagine that?
Know that pasta was not popular when Queen Elizabeth II was in her 8th year (1959) as Queen of the United Kingdom until much later in the 20th century.
Most who ate spaghetti at that time came from tin cans bought at Stop-N-Go like stores - Chef Boy-Ar-Dee (1928) and even the Ratatouille - which so happens to be a traditional French Proven?al dish of?vegetable stew, that was once known as a poor man's meal.
Remarkably, not much was known about the productions or origin of the spaghetti trees special, resulting in a great many viewers being swindled by the highly regarded BBC.
Eventually, the BBC, located in central London admitted that the video was a prank, disappointing hungry viewers everywhere.
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Is Organic Foods a 21st Century Gimmick?
Many consumers believe that the Organic label means the food has superior nutrition and is safer, especially in regard to pesticide residues.
This is not true and I'm not surprised.?
Studies have shown no appreciable difference in nutrition between crops grown either organically or conventionally of which - I'm not surprised as well.
FROM USDA ORGANIC WEBSITE
Falsely representing products as certified USDA organic violates the law and federal organic regulations. Using fraudulent documents to market, label, or sell non-organic agricultural products as organic is punishable by?financial penalties?of several thousands of dollars fines for each violation (see?7 CFR 3.91(i)(b)(xxxvi)).
Certifying agents and organic operations should continue to guard against these practices and practice caution when purchasing products from suppliers. Anyone suspecting a violation of the regulations can?report a complaint?to the NOP Compliance and Enforcement Division.
Fraudulent certificates may have been created and used without the knowledge of the operator or the certifying agent named in a certificate. The posting of fraudulent certificates does not necessarily mean that the named operator or certifying agent was involved in illegal activity. If an operation named in a fraudulent certificate is certified, its certifying agent identified in the?list of certified operations?can provide additional information and verifications to the organic trade.
Reported Fraudulent Organic Certificates
The NOP has compiled a list of information about fraudulent certificates that have been publicly announced into an easy-to-search spreadsheet. You can view PDF versions of the certificates by clicking on the operation names.
Scroll away ... .
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领英推荐
Enforcement stepped up in past year to protect USDA’s organic label - From Food Safety News
By?Dan Flynn?on?May 19, 2021
The USDA’s organic label is likely the most trusted mark of its kind. The organic label has seen steady growth ever since 1990 when Congress passed the Organic Food Production Act (OFPA).
The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that this year began with 45,578 organic businesses globally, with 62 percent, or 28,454 of those establishments, in the United States. The USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP) serves the organic market in the U.S., which has sales of $55.2 billion as of 2019.
USDA’s Organic Oversight and Enforcement update for 2021?is the source of those figures and much more.
The NOP has enjoyed increased staff and funding, employing 63 people, with more than half of its people assigned to either the Accreditation Division or the Compliance and Enforcement Division.
The annual report, which is published for only its fourth time, includes:
Since its report in February 2020, more than 750 complaints and inquiries went to NOP. So called “educational information” resolved 40 percent of those inquires. The NOP investigated the remaining 60 percent.
Agreements for voluntary compliance settled most cases without a need to find a violation. Examples of voluntary compliance include instances where an uncertified farm or business gets certified, or a certified farm or business corrects a noncompliance issue. On occasion, an accredited company exists in the organic market.
A year ago, the NOP set up an online complaint portal and now receives about 75 percent of its complaints through that venue. In 2020, it collected 390 complaints, and 63 percent were for organic claims made by uncertified operations.
Complaints about prohibited practices, pesticides, labeling errors, and fraud made up the rest.
“When the NOP has the evidence to support enforcement actions, investigators use a variety of tools to levy civil penalties, establish settlement agreements, and in appropriate cases refer bad actors for criminal investigation,” says the annual report.
The California State Organic Program and the European Union’s legal structures are also relied upon to enforce worldwide organic standards.
During 2020, the NOP resolved 448 cases, with 47 percent settled through voluntary compliance,
Investigations found another 22 percent did not have organic violations.
The NOP took administrative actions against 14 percent. Ten percent are under investigation. Another 3 percent were in civil settlements or penalties, And 1 percent were in for criminal prosecution.
The NOP credits additional staff for its being able to “escalate a range of enforcement actions to resolve older complaints more quickly.” More use of civil penalties and subpoenas is being made possible by staff investigations supported by the evidence
Stepped-up enforcement is also credited for the loss of certification by 679 operations in 45 countries through suspension or revocation. By country, the top with operations suspended or revoked in 2020 were:
The NOP notes that domestic farms and businesses are not suspended or revoked at a higher rate than international operations; it’s just the United States has the most USDA certified organic operations with 62 percent of the world total.
Fertilizer tainted with prohibited pesticides, the sale of non-organic grain as organic, and an organic compliance probe involving livestock are among the NOP’s major investigations. For example, a South Dakota man charged in a grain fraud case involving $75 million is currently awaiting sentencing.?Five men in Missouri are currently in prison for grain fraud and a sixth guilty plea is pending.
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So write me and tell me what you think about organic foods.
This should be interesting.
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