IN THE KITCHEN by Pat Tanner: Have you ever wondered just what is behind all those claims and labels we find on products on our supermarket shelves claims like "all natural," "free range," "certified organic" and even "hypoallergenic"?
Urvashi Rangan, a researcher with Consumers Union, has spent the last three years examining scores of such product claims, and has given each one a grade on her eco-labels report card, which appears on that organization’s latest Web site, www.eco-labels.org.
Ms. Rangan, who received a Ph.D. in environmental health sciences from Johns Hopkins University, is project director at the Consumer Policy Institute. She says that Consumers Union took on the task of systematically analyzing nearly 100 labels when consumers asked for help sorting out the myriad labels they were encountering in stores.
"With so many labels, it was impossible for them to tell which labels mean something, why they are important, and which are truly ‘value added.’ We started with food and wood-based product labels first," she relates.
The Web site now includes labels found on household cleaners and personal hygiene products, as well.
Ms. Rangan and her group began by establishing a set of criteria.
| "We went bowling with poultry labeled ‘fresh’ and found that, indeed, it was frozen through."
Urvashi Rangan, Ph.D.
Director, Consumer Policy Institute, Consumers Union |
"The first two criteria are most important," she says. "First, is the label meaningful: does it have standards behind it? Second, is there an organization verifying, with a checklist, that those standards are being met?"
Ms. Rangan’s team found that some labels are only partially meaningful or not at all meaningful.
"For example, we found that the label ‘no detectable residue,’ which is found on produce, reflects a real standard: .01 parts per million are allowable. On the other hand, ‘free range’ has extremely little meaning. The United States Department of Agriculture has defined it to be an option for the chicken to go outside for an undetermined period. As a result, chickens can literally never get out of the coop. If the producer opens the door for five minutes a day, thereby giving chickens the option to go out, that producer will have done enough to label them ‘free range,’" she explains.
"Free range" also falls short when it comes to verification.
"There are no independently verified standards nor an auditor or inspector who validates that the standard has been met," Ms. Rangan says. "‘Free range’ has no verification, while ‘certified organic’ has 600 pages of standards behind it," she says, alluding to the national standards set in place by the USDA in October.
The grade a label earns on the Eco-labels report card goes beyond its meaningfulness and verifiability to include three other criteria.
The first concerns consistency: does the label’s meaning stay consistent from one product to another? An example of inconsistency is the Nature Conservancy seal. "On potato chips, the seal means ‘sustainably grown,’ says Ms. Rangan. "But on Nature Valley granola bars, the seal means only that General Mills contributed $150,000 to the Nature Conservancy organization. Nature Valley granola bars are not more sustainably produced than any other granola bar."
Beyond that is the issue of transparency. For this, Ms. Rangan asks, "Who is funding these organizations whose labels appear on products? Who is on their board? Is information about this organization available and open? If the label isn’t that of an independent organization, it is a conflict of interest."
Lastly, the Consumers Union folks look at whether the standards were developed with public input.
It is on these last two issues conflict of interest and broad public (and industry) input that one label of local interest comes up short.
Wegmans IPM (for Integrated Pest Management) is a label featured on some of that company’s canned products, including tomato soup, carrots, corn, peas and tomatoes. The report card deems the label "somewhat" meaningful noting that there is a three-year grace period for labeled products to be in compliance with the Wegmans guidelines but gives it passing marks for verification and transparency. Of course, since Wegmans is both the producer and the certifier, it is not free from conflict of interest.
But in the four pages of information contained on the Web site relating to this one label, Consumers Union notes, "Although Wegmans does have a commercial interest in the sale of IPM labeled products, the guidelines and standards have been developed in a democratic fashion with input from multiple stakeholders, and certification audits are performed by an independent inspector."
Consumers Union and Urvashi Rangan’s team recognize that consumers most want the information contained in their labels report card when they are actually shopping, standing in front of a shelf, confronted with a product. So the newest feature of the Web site is Eco-labels.org to go. Visitors can download all the label report cards (the snapshots of how each label stacks up) directly into their palm-held devices to refer to while shopping.
The eco-labels.org Web site is not only comprehensive, it is easy to use and a model of flexibility. Users can search by label, by product or by certifying organization or program (such as, for example, Northeast Organic Farming Association-New Jersey). Click on "product" and you’ll encounter four categories. Click on the food category, and you’ll have 20 categories to choose from, from baby food to vegetables. Click on meat, you’ll encounter 32 labels that apply directly to meat, from "antibiotic free" to "Washington State Certified Organic."
The Web site also gives consumers general guidelines: "The best eco-labels are seals or logos indicating that an independent organization has verified that a product meets a set of meaningful and consistent standards for environmental protection and/or social justice."
Among the labels that fall into the latter category is "fair trade," which is often applied to coffee, chocolate, bananas and other crops from Southern Hemisphere countries.
"We’ve categorized that as a ‘socially responsible’ label. It guarantees workers a fair minimum wage and sets up an agreement at the beginning of the season between the purchaser and the farmer. It levels the playing field for small farmers, who are at the mercy of market volatility," Ms. Rangan explains, deeming "fair trade" a meaningful, certified, and verified label.
Asked which labels most surprised her during her research (which is ongoing: she hopes to add another 80 by summer), she mentions "free range," "hypoallergenic," "fragrance free" and "fresh" (as it is applied to poultry) as most meaningless.
"You can actually store the chicken down at freezing temperatures and still call it fresh. We have actually experimented at Consumers Union with it. We went bowling with poultry labeled ‘fresh’ and found that, indeed, it was frozen through."
The eco-labels report card can be accessed at www.eco-labels.org.
Pat Tanner can be heard each Saturday morning on "Dining Today with Pat Tanner" on MoneyTalk AM 1350 from 9 to 10 a.m.

