After the scheduled October National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) meeting in Omaha was cancelled due to the government shutdown, the NOSB reconvened online (January 13 & 14, 2026 ) in a makeup meeting.
The meeting was truncated to only two days and did not include oral comments. The NOSB reported regret in missing the oral comments but noted that the added opening for written comments – along with more time to review the written comments submitted during the regular comment period – was beneficial to the Board’s deliberations. Instead of doing full discussions on all the topics in the docket, the NOSB was only able to focus on what they felt were the core areas of work. This core work included prioritizing sunsets, proposals, and the discussion documents that strongly featured the inputs of NOSB members that were rotating off the Board.
NOSB members serve as volunteers and dedicate countless hours to reviewing public comments, weighing complex issues, and protecting organic integrity by keeping toxic materials out of organic food and farms (details about the NOSB can be found in 7 U.S.C. 6518(e). Their work plays a critical role in shaping the future of organic.
The makeup meeting is a testament to the dedication of the National Organic Program (NOP) to preserving the public process required by organic regulations.
Cornucopia is concerned about whether NOSB meetings will be going forward with the proper notice and comment. The Trump administration has cut staff at the NOP and USDA by about 30%. Although NOP leadership reports working to improve efficiencies within the program, Cornucopia is concerned about its ability to increase much-needed enforcement activities.
The Spring 2026 NOSB meeting was finally scheduled, though with more delay than is typical. By law, these meetings must be posted in advance to allow for timely notice and give an opportunity for public comments. Cornucopia continues to track this troubling development. New NOSB members were also intended to join the board for the spring meeting, with the deadline for nominations passing in September 2025. At the time of posting this article, it’s unclear whether new NOSB roles have been assigned internally.
National Organic Program (NOP) Report
USDA National Organic Program Deputy Administrator Jenny Tucker summarized the NOP’s continued commitment to enforcing organic standards, detecting and addressing organic fraud, and attempts to address certification burdens. It is unclear what impact low staffing levels will have on these activities in the longer term.
The priorities, as reported by Dr. Tucker, are:
- Import oversight
- Technology and reporting, including the Organic Integrity Database
- Certifier oversight (including auditing organic certifiers) and collaboration
- Streamlining certification, including working on the common organic system plan (OSP).
The NOP report acknowledged that the Strengthening Organic Enforcement (SOE) changes to the organic standards has increased workloads for certifiers. Certifiers must now conduct more unannounced inspections, audit supply chains for high-risk operations, and make sure certified operations can track their products back to their organic origins. The NOP noted that some organic certifiers have over-extended themselves by moving into countries using subcontractors, and the NOP has prioritized tracking and enforcing the variety of certifications coming in at an increased rate.
Other concerns, benefits, and ongoing efforts regarding the Strengthening Organic Enforcement Rule include:
- Work to formalize grower group requirements is ongoing and deeper capabilities in this area are still needed;
- Mass balance tracking has proven to be detailed, difficult work, and certifiers are reportedly struggling. Mass balance tracking compares the acres in organic production in a given country to the output in crops. It’s not an exact science because harvests vary, but it is a reality test of sorts. Shiploads of “organic” grain have come from countries that lack the acreage to grow these vast quantities in the past.
- Data being reported by Customs and Border Patrol, brokers, and other parties is not standardized, meaning the data is frequently confusing or not showing the full picture.
Tucker also noted a problem Cornucopia has reported on before: When an international operation is caught in organic fraud, sometimes they will simply surrender their organic certificate and form a new business or seek a new certifier, to avoid significant penalties. Tucker noted that “We all need to address this as a sector.”
Dr. Tucker described the enforcement benefits of the Strengthening Organic Enforcement Rule. Customs and Border Patrol has been working with the NOP to hold suspected fraudulent imports at the border. The communication between the importers and exporters has allowed the NOP to actually put a hold on shipments before arrival, preventing fraudulent goods from entering the marketplace. The introduction of more harmonized tariff schedule codes has also helped improve data tracking, which has helped to identify high-risk products more easily. Improvements continue, and the NOP believes the SOE rule is starting to have a positive impact controlling import fraud.
NOTE: Cornucopia believes that two things are true at once here: Some fraud is being prevented, and organic grain farmers in the US still find themselves in a painful and chaotic marketplace. Grain farmers report high prices for corn this year, after years of punishingly low prices that have led many to sell acreage, plant non-GMO grains (dropping their organic certification), and take on crushing debt. Some domestic grain farmers Cornucopia has spoken with suggest that this year’s revenue will only pay down a fraction of their debt, and they expect cheap imports to flood the US market imminently (high prices attract fraudsters with low risk and high pay-off).
Organic import fraud requires a multi-pronged approach, and Cornucopia does not believe that the SOE Rule is sufficient on its own. Importantly, it does enable the NOP to collaborate with other agencies, including Customs and Border Patrol. This is a crucial first step, and it will take more time to build a fully functioning system. In the meantime, many organic grain farmers are still struggling.
Cornucopia supports the Organic Imports Verification Act (OIVA) in the Farm Bill – you’ll hear more about this from us this year. We believe strategic testing of high-risk imports is necessary to stop the bleed.
The NOP has lost significant staffing in the past year. In response, staff have been reshuffled to prioritize crucial NOP activities, including enforcement and rule-making. The creation and updates to courses at the Organic Integrity Learning Center have been frozen.
Program officials are prohibited from divulging details that could accidentally present a pathway to fraud.
[Cornucopia will share an alert soon, asking you to contact Congress about the proposed Farm Bill. What’s happening with the Farm Bill anyway?]
Common OSP
The NOP reported on efforts to create a common Organic System Plan. The hope is that an updated, compliant OSP template will soon be posted on the NOP website that can be adopted by certifiers. The template is intended to streamline certification and help standardize and simplify processes. Tucker reported that this common OSP is in development – they are getting feedback and developing a long-term governance policy.
Dr. Tucker also said this:
“I think it is time in the organic sector’s growth to rethink the concept of being scale neutral or size neutral. There are many larger-than-exempt small farms that have adopted organic practices, but who have chosen not to get certified. They are selling into local markets where people know them – they don’t need the organic label or certification for market success, but they’re practicing organic without using the term or label. Yet, they could likely get certified if they wanted to. It would be great to have a home for them in the system. How can we invite those farms in? There must be a way to capture good work happening in organic that isn’t on our radar right now. We could all play a role in reimagining that.
We also need to be honest and thoughtful about the sector’s joint responsibility for oversight at the other – large – end of the scale. There is sometimes not enough accountability within long, complex supply chains and systems – responsibility gets diluted too much and that increases the risk of fraud. The public-private partnership needs to include joint protection of the brand. You choose who you buy from – and the sector needs to be responsible for protecting the good guys and pushing out the bad ones. True shared accountability for the seal makes the sector stronger.”
Cornucopia is aware of community-scale farms that are not certified organic, despite operating under organic principles. Dr. Tucker’s comments are interesting, and we invite the community to consider how we can better make a space for these small farms already fulfilling organic ideals.
NOTE: Many small, diversified farms are falling through the gaps in certification because they experience more minor non-compliances than large operations that employ teams of lawyers, certification experts, and office personnel. Despite their thoughtful and rigorous farm practices, when the person who bought an extra bag of feed from the mill is the same person who drove it home to feed the birds, receipts sometimes disappear. Small-scale farms with tightrope finances are also less resilient in the marketplace. If we want to encourage more diversified farms to enter—and stay—in the organic marketplace, we need to account for how the paperwork burden and complexity behind certification impacts different scales.
Other Matters
The NOSB unanimously rejected allowing synthetic compostable polymers as organic compost feedstocks. This vote was an important affirmation that plastics and other synthetic compounds have no place in organic soil!
The USDA must next take the NOSB’s recommendation and reject the petition to the NOP for rulemaking to allow these materials in organic compost feedstocks. (It is unclear to Cornucopia whether the USDA will do so, so stay tuned.) These polymers are not necessary to produce organic composts and could lead to contamination of organic farmland from additional microplastic and PFAS loading of organic compost.
Sunset Reviews
Sunset reviews are one of the NOSB’s primary duties. Each material on the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances is reviewed by the NOSB every five years. The sunset review typically includes reviewing public comments and seeking any new information about the substance’s impact on human health or the environment, any new natural alternatives, and other criteria under the Organic Foods Production Act. (One concern about skipping or not following the regulatory procedures around NOSB meetings is the potential for material review to fall behind or be incomplete.)
Colors
There is a changing landscape for colorings used in conventional food that may impact the colors allowed in organic goods. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has called for a phase out of certain synthetic colors.
Organic products never contain synthetic colors: they have always been prohibited in organic. Colors permitted in organic are all individually reviewed by the NOSB. However, the move from the HHS and FDA has led to high increase in demand for natural colors in non-organic food production, which may impact availability of natural colors for use in organic products.
Tl:dr: If a non-organic company is going to be required to use natural colors, it may have an impact on the organic supply chain.
