As with most good ideas, the group of all naturally produced, sustainable food proponents started small and grew to where it is today. At some point in that growth, less idealistic people saw it more as a way to make a buck than to provide healthy alternatives to our corporate, commodity food system. So with this impetus the Organic Food Production Act was passed in 1990 followed by the establishment of the National Organic Program (NOP) www.ams.usda.gov/NOP  by the federal government in 2002. The job of inspecting and certification is done by numerous (>50) independent certifying agencies in the United States.         

In general the NOP is a set of rules and regulations defining the production, handling, processing and sale of organically produced food. It disallows the use of substances they have deemed as potentially harmful such as pesticides, hormones and chemical fertilizers. The national list of allowed and prohibited substances is long and can be found on the NOP website. If a producer follows all the rules and is certified, they can then use the organic seal on their product for sale.

What the National Organic Program is not may be just as important. The organic seal is not a guarantee that the food product is local, family farm produced, pasture raised* or even produced in the U.S. Just like many of the everyday items we buy at the retail store, even organic food production has the ability to make use of cheaper foreign labor. Sometimes we don’t have a choice if the raw products are produced here, then sent to China to be manufactured before returning. But I am not comfortable with the gaps left in the food system when my edibles have no source verification or growing protocols are left to someone in a country I would have trouble finding on a map.

The organic seal is a good tool to use as a starting point, but one may want to check out food options via farmers markets and web searches for local producers. If it is important at all to you to meet and know the people who actually raised and harvested what you eat, it may take more than just a 20 minute trip to the nearest retail super food giant.
 
* The terminology used by NOP is “access to the outdoors”