It is hard to truly do justice to the recent organic food explosion. What was once a small subset of the overall food and beverage market is now close to a $200 billion industry—and expected to grow to over $500 billion by 2032. In just the decade from 2011 to 2021, U.S. organic food sales grew by an annual average of 8 percent, while the amount of acreage planted in organic crops increased by just under 80 percent. In that same timeframe, certified organic operations increased by more than 90 percent.
Unfortunately—and, given human nature, perhaps inevitably—there have also been cases of organic fraud, where non-organic products were inauthentically passed off as organic. According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the problem of organic fraud is on the rise, with particular issues in organic imports originating from the Black Sea region and countries like India. The agency jumped into the fray by adopting new regulations in 2023—dubbed the "Strengthening Organic Enforcement" (SOE) rule—which went into effect in March of this year. Importers of organic products were given an "unofficial grace period" through this September to comply with the rule. Now that the grace period has passed, the consequences are setting in.
