You need to read this today, because if you have anything to say about it, today is your last chance. They only gave the public a 7-day review process, and this only crossed my desk about 10 hours ago.

Once again, everything is not as scary as they make it sound - however the changes certainly give the potential for extreme abuse. The documentation for the official proposed rules goes through big circles, but let me sum it up for you. A lobbyist approached the FDA about letting non-organically produced versions of ingredients to be labelled as organic. They chatted on such and such date, then determined that it fits such and such specification, and are now proposing the broad stroke ability to label non-organic as organic. Essentially.

I remember back in Debate Club, we had to write up bill proposals, and they needed to be very specific. Take for instance, the proposal repeats over and over "is considered commercially unavailable." Whom would consider it commercially unavailable? Are we just going to leave that up to the discretion of corporations? Not a good plan!

I would have no problem with this if they added one simple sentence to the rule. It's the same sentence they have in the beginning of each proposal, but not in the rule itself - "where [and when] the organic version is [...] commercially unavailable [in the quantity necessary]." The way it stands, they could easily get away with using the cheaper, non-organic version all the time, and still ask you to pay the higher price - both in your wallet and your health.

So if you see the huge potential for abuse in this, Natural Solutions Foundation has made it easy for you to speak up. They are also working on a petition for extending the 7-day view period, but at this moment the site is down. You could try it anyways, if you wanted. Just keep in mind I do not know what is on that page.