organic from China

Make local organic your gold standard; failing that, stick to organic from countries with good food-safety records.

Organic food from China should be up to USDA standards, but that country's recent food safety record raises doubts.

RODALE NEWS, EMMAUS, PA—Look more closely at your produce, and you may see something surprising. A USDA-certified organic seal and a "product of China" label. More and more stores, including Whole Foods markets, are selling certified-organic produce that's imported from China, a country plagued with food scandals. And it's hard not to wonder, despite the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) organic label, if it's really as safe and healthy as organic food from the United States.

"That last thing I want to do is unfairly penalize the farmers and companies in China that are doing a good job, but for the organic industry in the U.S., this is a bareknuckles global economy we're in, and we need to do everything we can to protect the integrity of the organic brand," explains Charles Benbrook, PhD, chief researcher with The Organic Center. "Many players in the conventional food industry view organic as a significant threat to their future profitability. Because of that, organic is going to be under all sorts of attacks and skepticism from within the United States. Layering on some problems with imported organic food seems like playing with fire."

THE DETAILS: Certified-organic food imported into this country is subject to the same oversight as organic food grown in the United States. Third-party certifiers are accredited by the USDA. The inspectors must train to USDA standards; some certifiers use their own employees, and some contract out to third-party certifiers who live in the country where inspections are taking place.

The problem, Benbrook says, is that China has an abysmal food-safety record, and there's a culture of skirting food-safety laws in that country. Take the multiple tainted milk and dog food scandals, in which companies intentionally added the chemical melamine to products to cause a spike in perceived protein levels. And just recently, farmers on a resort island were caught using a banned, toxic pesticide called isocarbophos. "There is a documented pattern of noncompliance bordering on fraud that is endemic in the Chinese food industry," Benbrook says.

WHAT IT MEANS: Organic is the answer, and it's how we can all save ourselves and the planet from major food threats. However, certified-organic from China can be a bit of a murky subject, and there are some uncomfortable unknowns. On one hand, USDA-organic is the strongest food standard that consumers can trust. But, notes Benbrook, opening up to importing Chinese organic foods could lead to food-safety scandals that could decrease consumer trust of organics. Plus, he says, in China, even if farmers are doing everything right, the food could still be tainted due to the country's widespread air, water, and soil pollution. "China is a country that has emphasized industrial-driven economic growth and has invested very sparsely in pollution controls and cleaning up air and water," Benbrook says. "As a result, a lot of toxic materials have fallen on the land or are in water resources used for irrigation."

Benbrook also questions the practicality. "There's a lot of hunger in China. This food should be consumed by Chinese," Benbrook says. "That will avoid the huge chunk of greenhouse gases invested in getting Chinese-grown produce preserved and shipped halfway around the world to the U.S. market, too. It strikes me as fundamentally inefficient."

Unless these concerns can be resolved, your safest course of action is to find regionally grown or raised organic food. To find options near you, visit LocalHarvest.org.