TEMPO
Playing label lottery with organic body products

By Jessica Ramakrishnan,
Columbia News Service
Published April 26, 2006

For Dana Varon, buying a face cleanser or body lotion is not a simple matter of picking a bottle off the shelves of a drugstore and taking it to the register.

In the body-care section at a Manhattan branch of the Whole Foods grocery chain, Varon painstakingly reads the labels and scans for chemical content before making her choice.

The 30-year-old musician is a picky shopper for good reason. Five years ago, a melanoma appeared on her arm. It turned out to be harmless, but Varon swore then she would buy and use only the purest possible products on her skin.

"Labels are not always honest," she said. "You really have to read the ingredients to know exactly what you're putting on your skin."

The personal body-care aisles are crammed with products billed as natural and organic, but Varon and buyers like her are well aware that unless a product carries the green and white logo from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the product is not certified organic.

To qualify for the USDA seal, personal body-care products must have an organic content level of at least 70 percent and be free of preservatives in order to meet the stringent standards set by the National Organic Program.

But it's impossible for all body-care product-makers to meet the standard, originally devised for food products. Consider the case of soap and shampoo. The production methods and inclusion of water, which is not an ingredient that can be certified as organic, make such products unable to qualify for the USDA certification.

And in the absence of an alternative standard geared toward a market segment that respects the organic ethos but is unable to meet the stringent USDA guidelines, an immense gray area exists.

 European standards

In Europe, where clear certification standards for personal body-care products are in place, consumers such as Varon would not have a problem ascertaining the organic or natural quality of body or hair-care products they buy. In Germany, for example, industry groups banded together to create the BDIH standard in 1996. The stamp certifies a product as naturally made but allows the restricted use of chemicals and preservatives.

In the U.S., a similar alternative standard for personal body-care products is emerging. At the Natural Products Expo West trade show last month, industry and consumer groups agreed to table a standard under the auspices of the National Sanitation Foundation. A draft of the standard is expected this fall, but until then the organic labeling free-for-all continues.

The growth in organic personal body-care products has been robust, according to SPINS, an information and service provider for the natural products industry. In the 12-month period beginning in February 2005, SPINS identified 2,000 products in the market that had cumulative sales of $73.6 million. It projects the number of products entering the market will grow by at least 50 percent this year.

"Personal care aisles are messed up," said David Bronner, president of Dr. Bronner's Magical Soaps in Escondido, Calif. "Companies are treating the word organic as interchangeable with natural."

Bronner is a member of the NSF standard discussion group, which is composed of the Organic Consumer Association and producers, and the Personal Care Task Force, a group dominated by industry players.

"The companies that spend millions of dollars on sourcing organic ingredients know that most customers are not paying close attention to labels," said David Browne of SPINS.

"They feel that competitors who don't make the same investment but use the ‘organic' label have an unfair advantage," he said.

Dr. Bronner's Sun Dog line of body lotions and lip balm display the USDA seal, but its liquid and bar soaps fail the grade because the processes involved in soap making are not considered organic despite the fact that most of the ingredients are.

"Organic refers to agricultural process," said Adam Eidinger, the Washington representative for OCA. "It's not a branding tool to be used to market products and charge a premium for."

But that is precisely what many firms are doing, Eidinger said.

One company that advertises itself as organic is Avalon Organics, a Petaluma, Calif.-based body-care products firm. Avalon Organics' label on hair-care products doesn't mean the products are 100 percent or even 70 percent organic.

While Avalon products do use individual certified organic ingredients, they lack the USDA organic certification seal.

"Organic is important, but from Avalon's perspective, it is secondary to the safety issue," said Morris Shriftman, Avalon's senior vice president for marketing and new product development.

Safety campaign

Shriftman, who also is involved in the NSF deliberations, points to the company's efforts to remove such substances as parabens, a chemical linked to breast cancer, and its "Consciousness in Cosmetics" safety campaign.

The branding issue, though, isn't going to go away until a suitable alternative to the government organic label is set, said Craig Minowa, an environmental scientist for the OCA. "These labels are misleading to people who are concerned about organic content and processes."

Meanwhile, the federal body that oversees labeling has remained outside the debate.

"Our job is only to ensure that food produce marketed as organic fulfills our standards," said Joan Shaffer, spokeswoman for the National Organic Program, the USDA office that oversees organic certification. "For example, we send certifiers to certify the farming of tomatoes and the manufacturing of tomatoes into ketchup. It is beyond our scope if the tomatoes are then used to make shampoo."

Without a reliable labeling system in place for body-care products that lack the USDA seal, consumers such as Varon can expect to be vigilant label readers for some time to come.

"I would definitely like labels to say whether a product is really organic, partially organic or not at all," she said. "It would put more trust in the market."

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Navigating the package

The three label types that consumers are likely to find on organic body-care products are:

USDA Organic Seal

This guarantees that the products contain ingredients free of antibiotics, synthetic pesticides and genetically modified organisms. The definition covers farming, manufacturing, distribution and labeling processes. Products containing the USDA seal contain at least 70 percent organic ingredients.

Natural

There is no set definition for this category, but the industry's consensus is that natural products must contain no artificial preservatives, sweeteners or coloring, chemical additives or hydrogenated oils.

Certified Organic Ingredients

Indicates ingredients are certified as organic. The entire product is not organic and may contain non-organic materials and processes.

   --J.R.