Anne Ross | Investigating International Grain Fraud | 042

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042: Anne Ross, the Cornucopia Institute's Director of International Policy talks about being tasked with investigating organic grain fraud at the international level over recent years. Anne lays out how the system is designed to accommodate corruption, how fraudulent organic grain is used, and how real organic farmers suffer when it reaches the market. She also explains what consumers can do to try and avoid supporting these bad players.

Anne Ross is Cornucopia's Director of International Policy and has a Juris Doctor's degree from the University of Arkansas in agriculture and food law. She spent three years tracking shipments and subsequently exposed a massive amount of fraudulent grain entering the USDA organic system. Today Anne continues her organic watchdog work at Cornucopia, who publishes helpful scorecards for consumers, as well as a grain buyer's guide.

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The Real Organic Podcast is hosted by Dave Chapman and Linley Dixon, engineered by Brandon StCyr, and edited and produced by Jenny Prince.

The Real Organic Project is a farmer-led movement working towards certifying 1,000 farms across the United States this year. Our add-on food label distinguishes soil-grown fruits and vegetables from hydroponically-raised produce. It also identifies pasture-raised meat, milk, and eggs as compared to products harvested from animals in horrific confinement (CAFOs - confined animal feeding operations).

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We believe that the organic standards, with their focus on soil health, biodiversity, and animal welfare were written as they should be. But the current lack of enforcement of those standards is jeopardizing small farms that follow the law. The lack of enforcement is also jeopardizing the overall health of the customers who support the organic movement; customers who are not getting what they pay for at market but are still paying a premium price. The lack of enforcement is jeopardizing the very cycles (water, air, nutrients) that Earth relies upon to provide us all with a place to live, by pushing extractive, chemical agriculture to the forefront.

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