Aveeno: Losing Organic Certification!

You may have read recently that Aveeno lost organic
certification for a product and subsequently seems to have pulled the entire
line. The line was Aveeno Baby Organic Harvest (a horrible name anyway – it
sounds like someone is out in a field harvesting babies off of plants. Who
thought of that?)

How in the heck did this happen?

Well – we know that the USDA – National Organic Program did
an “investigation”. They only do that if a complaint has been filed. I can say
having looked at the ingredients statement on the lotion that it was obvious to
me that they used a non-compliant preservative. The real question is why didn’t
Aveeno/Johnson and Johnson know it? Were they ignorant or did they deliberately
mislead the certifier? Why didn’t the certifier know it? Were they ignorant or
just greedy?

We can’t really know answers to those questions but I can
repeat – READ THE DAMN LAW. If you want to be certified to the NOP regulation,
a food regulation, but you make cosmetics, you need to read the law or hire
someone (shameless plug for self here) who knows the law.

It was inexcusable for a major corporation to have made a
mistake of this size. The cost of product and market development, the deception
of consumers (baby products no less),
and the cost to make the line disappear – well, it is probably more than my
whole business is worth.

Folks – this is not rocket science. It says in the NOP
regulation exactly what ingredients you can use. It should never have gotten by
the certifier – but then I’ve had a problem with organic food certifiers
certifying cosmetics all along, I still don’t believe they know what they are
looking at, and this proves it.