According to the USDA, there is no requirement for retailers to alert consumers to the toxic, propylene oxide fumigation or steam treatment applied to raw almonds from California.
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"This rule is killing the California Organic Almond business,"- said Steve Koretoff, a plaintiff in the lawsuit and owner of Purity Organics located in Kerman, CA. "Because foreign almonds do not have to be pasteurized their price is going up while our price is going down because of the rule. It makes no sense."- Koretoff added.
Two groups of consumers that have been particularly vocal in their opposition to the almond treatment rule are raw food enthusiasts and vegans. These consumers may obtain as much as 30% of their daily protein intake from raw almonds, after grinding them for flour and other uses. Studies exploring nutritional impacts following fumigant and steam treatment have yet to be publicly released. A Cornucopia Institute freedom of information request for the documents is awaiting a response from the USDA.
"We raw vegans believe raw foods, from non-animal sources, contains valuable nutrients "" some not yet well-understood by scientists,"- stated Joan Levin, a retired attorney living in Chicago. "These nutrients can be destroyed by heat, radiation and toxic chemicals. We support the continued availability of fresh produce free of industrial age tampering,"- explained Levin. Cornucopia's Fantle noted that the Washington, D.C. federal district court has already assigned the almond lawsuit a case number, beginning its move through the judicial system. "We believe this is a strong legal case and hope for a favorable decision in time to protect this year's almond harvest,"- Fantle said.
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Additional background information on the almond treatment issue, including a copy of the legal complaint, can be found on The Cornucopia Institute's web page, under the Authentic Almond Project, at www.cornucopia.org. The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Washington DC, has been assigned case number 1:08-CV-01558.
PCC Natural Markets, in Seattle, WA is the nation's oldest and largest cooperative grocer. Goldie Caughlan, is the co-op's Nutrition Education Manager as well as a board member of The Cornucopia Institute. According to Caughlan: "After the USDA's treatment mandate became effective, we added imported organically grown and conventional almonds. The labels and signage we created accurately informs customers these are truly "raw," and explain the changed requirements for U.S. producers. We continue to sell some U.S. produced almonds, but this has necessitated investigating growers to ascertain that we sell only steam-pasteurized almonds, not those fumigated by chemicals. These added efforts are time consuming and create added expense for our company."-
"This is yet another example of how government, under the guise of "-public health,' is interfering with an individual's fundamental right to consume the foods of their choice,"- noted attorney David G. Cox of Lane, Alton & Horst LLC in Columbus, OH and a legal advisor to The Cornucopia Institute. "The government's police power does not authorize the USDA to choose for the individual what foods should be in the marketplace."-
Mitch Wallis, a San Diego attorney and another member of the Cornucopia legal team, added that "in one fell swoop, the USDA and its agribusiness-dominated California Almond Board, have taken away all consumer access to a truly 'raw' almond. Almonds are, especially in California, perhaps the "-king of nuts.' If they can get away with destroying the almond, what does this portend for the future of all nuts and ultimately for all raw and natural foods?"-
"It goes against all reason for the USDA to require domestic almonds to be pasteurized while allowing unpasteurized almonds to be imported from abroad,"- observed Eli Penberthy, a Seattle, WA-based food and farming analyst with The Cornucopia Institute. "Small-scale and organic farmers in California have lost sales to retailers and consumers who are instead choosing to buy truly raw almonds from Italy and Spain."- The shift to foreign sources is ironic since there is virtual unanimity in the retail sector that foreign nuts are of lower quality in terms of flavor and appearance.
The Cornucopia Institute has been articulating the concerns of family-scale farmers, producing organic, conventional and local food, about the potential fallout from the industrialization of our food supply. Foodborne illnesses, and the contamination of food from large industrial farming operations, are now motivating regulators to look at "technological fixes" rather than addressing the root cause of the problems "" the widespread fecal contamination of the nation's food supply.
"It is ironic that consumers, in increasing numbers, are voting in the marketplace for a higher quality of food from organic and local farmers "" producers they trust," stated The Cornucopia Institute 's Fantle. "The very growers that stand to lose are the safest and highest quality producers of food in the United States. We will not allow them to be placed at a competitive disadvantage."
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