Ethics in the Organic Movement - Re-Thinking Organic Food and Farming in a Changing World - page 28

broadened and had become much more than an agricultural movement, but also a
societal movement of 'organic activism' (Sligh and Cierpka 2007 , p. 34).
In the 1990ties, in the US organic has been called a counter-culture movement
(Tovey 1997 , 2002 ; Reed 2002 ; Allen et al. 2003 , pp. 63, 65). With the increase
of farmers' markets, community supported agriculture, urban farming and food
cooperatives, today many such social activities for producing and procuring food
have taken a 'stand' against corporate organics, and have actively included values
associated with such innovations (Tovey 2002 ), closely linked to the IFOAM
Principles. In North America, these activities have been popularized by well known
farmers, authors and activists today such as Wendell Berry ( 2002 ), Wes Jackson
( 1980 ), Joe Salatin ( 2013 ), Barbara Kingsolver (Kingsolver et al. 2009 ) and Michael
Pollan ( 2007 ). In Europe, on the other hand, organic simply became part of its long
tradition of farmers' markets, and introduced in supermarkets, while food coops
played a minor role, and community supported agriculture and urban farming were
unheard of (Seyfang 2006 ).

2.3.4 Organic Principles and Standards

Between the 1970s and 1980s there was a fundamental shift that profoundly
affected the reflection and practices of ethics in the organic movement - the
“institutionalization of organic farming” (Michelsen et al. 2001 ). In 1972, the
International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) was created
to improve communication and trade for organic. In 1980, IFOAM formulated the
first set of principles to serve as the ethical guidelines for organic and then codified
as the Basic Standards (Schmid and Lockeretz 2007 , p. 154). During the early
stages of organic, rules, norms or standards were formulated largely on a private
and informal basis. IFOAM was the first organization that initiated a worldwide
formalization process of organic.
From an ethical standpoint, this was a remarkable change. While in the pioneer
days, the “control” of production was part of a personal relationship between
farmers and consumers, among farmers and within farmer associations, the IFOAM
Standards transferred the “verification of organic” to a separate certification and
inspection system. Additionally, the focus on what was relevant for organic farming
changed, for example, processing and animal welfare began to be of interest
(Schmid and Lockeretz 2007 , p. 152). Originally, “in the pioneer phase the standards
brought organic farmers together, whereas later the standards seemed to divide
them” (ibid 2007 , 158). Additionally, there became increased competition between
different rules and labels. While this stimulated the development of organic, it
contributed to confusion about what constituted an organic product.
The popularization of the organic movement has also led to a measure of
detachment or weakening of former values and their substitution by a new under-
standing of organic agriculture (Vogt 2001 ; Patzel 2009 , p. 9). The earlier organic
values were shaped by small farmers and Christian attitudes about life yet the