By JIM RUTLEDGE

D.C. Correspondent

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a stinging rebuke of the agency’s organic certification inspection program, the USDA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has uncovered negligent inspections at several of the nation’s top ports that failed to correctly certify corn and soybean imports that had been falsely labeled “organic,” according to a government audit.

The watchdog review was initiated following media accounts and farmers’ complaints that alleged millions of pounds of crop imports that were fraudulently certified as “organic” were undermining the prices of U.S. organic food products. The nation’s organic foods are monitored and certified by the USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP), administered by the agency’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS).

The findings by the OIG were released Sept. 13 in a 21-page audit, accompanied by a response from the AMS that agreed to make changes recommended by the auditors.

Just four months ago, the NOP yanked the organic certification of a Turkish commodities exporter. According to the USDA, the exporter had falsely marketed at least 597,025 bushels of soybeans that were fraudulently sold in the United States as organic.

Last December, the USDA said 36 million pounds of conventional soybeans were discovered with bogus organic certification labels, with at least 21 million pounds of the shipment entering the U.S. food supply.

According to the Washington Post, the USDA has tracked shipments of fraudulently labeled corn and soybeans that had been exported from Turkey after they had been produced or handled in Kazakhstan, Moldova, Romania, Russia or Ukraine, before arriving in the United States.

Over the past several months investigators visited seven U.S. ports and found the “AMS was unable to provide reasonable assurance that NOP required documents were reviewed … to verify that imported agricultural products labeled as organic were from certified organic foreign farms and businesses that produced and sell organic products.

“Further,” the auditors found, “imported agricultural products, whether organic or conventional, are sometimes fumigated at U.S. ports of entry to prevent prohibited pests from entering the U.S. … The AMS has not established and implemented controls … to identify, track and ensure treated organic products are not sold, labeled or represented as organic.”

As a result of the audit, the agency has recommended a series of steps to safeguard the integrity of the NOP program, requiring “AMS to strengthen its border control over organic imports.

“Agricultural products sold or labeled organic must be produced only on certified farms and handled only through certified operations,” the IG report said.

Auditors also recommended the AMS step up coordination with “U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents to review all organic important information and establish an electronic messaging system between the two agencies.” The AMS set a July 2018 deadline for implementing the verification system to block shipments with fake import certificates.

One group that has been critical of the NOP is the nonprofit Cornucopia Institute, a national food and farm policy watchdog entity working to uphold the integrity of organic foods. The group stated: “The entry of fraudulent organics is the single greatest threat to our domestic farmers and to the public perception of organics as a whole that exists today.”

Cornucopia’s Anne Ross, a farm policy analyst, said, “I fear that consumer confidence in the integrity of organic food is rapidly eroding, and that our domestic farmers are being swept away in this tide if the USDA does not act quickly.”

And the OIG findings have prompted the Senate Agriculture Committee to announce that it intends to hold public hearings at a future date. The USDA says the audit is available to the public at www.usda.gov/oig

In another development, Miles McEvoy, the deputy administrator at the USDA who led the NOP, resigned on Sept. 10, three days before the audit was released to the public. McEvoy has been a longtime target of Cornucopia, which has criticized him for what it has called lax enforcement of various NOP policies and regulations.

He was appointed to the post eight years ago by the Obama administration. In his resignation letter, McEvoy, 60, said he was retiring and returning to his home in Olympia, Wash., to spend more time with his grandchildren and “in nature.” He said his time at the agency had been “an incredible honor” and “an extremely gratifying experience. I’m ready to have a less intense work-life and to spend more time biking and birding.”

Starting in October, the NPO will be led by agency veteran and Acting Administrator Jenny Tucker and Bruce Summers, acting deputy administrator of AMS who was appointed to the post last October.