by Natasha Khairullah
Staff Writer
Ever heard the old adage, “You are what you eat”?
If you’re one of the many people who have and subsequently delved into healthier living in hopes that an organic diet might just do you some good after years of cheeseburgers and fries, exercise caution.
Consumers are eagerly seeking out organic products, which are produced without using pesticides and fertilizers, hormones, antibiotics, irradiation or genetic engineering, but with natural products, which are minimally processed and free of preservatives.
But according to one local organic and natural foods retailer, the industry is changing and all those efforts that the consumers are making to shift to a healthier lifestyle may, in fact, come up fruitless unless they know what to look for.
“It’s great to want to live organic and I couldn’t be happier about the awareness that’s out there these days as opposed to a decade ago,” said Aaron Gottlieb, owner of Native Sun. “But the consumer needs to be educated because there are some sketchy things going on in the industry.”
Native Sun opened in Mandarin in 1997 and is one of the oldest stores of its kind on the First Coast. Gottlieb opened a second store off State Road 9A and Baymeadows Road in August 2006 and was recently recognized by a national trade publication as one of the industry’s most cutting edge companies. However, citing the “beating down” of organic standards by big-name companies, he says the shine of the recognition is quickly loosing it’s luster and has left him filling the role of local consumer advocate.
According to the Organic Trade Association, the sales of organic foods and beverages reached $14 billion last year, having grown from 20-33 percent each year since 1997 – the year Native Sun first opened.
“I think the toughest challenge we have as a company is the fact that people’s perception of groceries is streamlined: there is conventional groceries and then there is natural foods groceries,” said Gottlieb, adding that customers don’t know the true cost of the said products and think cheaper is better.
“Often times, cheaper means worse. It’s hard to explain to an individual who comes in my store that not all organic is created equal,” he said. “For example, they see some organic pasta sauce at my store and then the same sauce at another big box store for less and they think they’re getting a deal there, but the reality is, they don’t know what they’re getting.”
Those “big box” stores include Wal-Mart Stores – the nation’s largest retailer – which is marketing an expanded selection of organic products, Publix Super Markets’s GreenWise and Whole Foods Market, the Austin, Texas-based market leader. Though area competition hasn’t hurt Native Sun from a business standpoint, as Gottlieb pointed out the stores’ sales generally increased 10 percent when a new natural and/or organic retailer arrives; from an ideological standpoint, the competition is massacring the industry.
“That’s why what organic is today, I don’t believe in it. I believe in the organic movement for what the core roots are,” he said.
Gottlieb explained that a number of companies that have national brand recognition as industry leaders have deteriorated the standards because they can’t accommodate the mass market demands. In turn, they lobby various certifiers and say they can’t afford to comply with the set certification standards.
“We’ve found some pretty nasty situations where the parent company of a natural chicken company that was free of antibiotics and growth hormones and everything else, was out there beating down the organic standards in Washington in order to market their natural chicken as organic, and that’s not right,” said Gottlieb. “When you find something at a cheaper price, you have to ask why. Because organic isn’t cheap.
“A lot of times, they give the customer just enough organic for them to feel like they’re getting it, but anywhere that they can cut a corner – because organic costs more – to lower the cost to make their own margins increase, they will.”
How does a company “beat down” organic standards? Doesn’t a “USDA Organic” sticker say it all?
The misconception is that the U.S. Department of Agriculture logo shows that it is a certified organic product but if you don’t know who certified it, the label is really no good, a concept that Gottlieb says is the hardest part to get across to the consumers. “They have subcontracted out the actual people that do the inspections and if those people who inspect the item don’t have their name on an item but the USDA does, the company is falsifying the paper work,” he said.
Native Sun will not sell a product that does not include who certified it.
“I could go right click on the USDA logo right now, download it and go put it on every product in the store, and anyone else can do the same thing.”
Gottlieb said a certified organic store is your first protective layer to know what you’re getting is being properly inspected.
Because of the dropping standards in some parts of the industry, Gottlieb urges consumers to look closely for proper certification, and to know what they buy.
In the meantime, Gottlieb and his staff are doing their part to educate the new consumers by monitoring the stores daily, making constant adjustments to labeling to accommodate various allergies and diet requirements and annually meet requirements to remain a certified organic retailer by the USDA.
Additionally, Native Sun regularly checks with manufacturers about ingredient changes that might affect whether the products stay on its shelves.
“If a manufacturer switched ingredients tomorrow and it does not meet Native Sun standards, we contact the manufacturer and follow up with letters requesting change,” he said.
About 50 percent of the time, manufacturers end up compromising.
“We use a paper tracking record that we keep on file and we give people opportunities to respond. If they don’t respond, I don’t care how much money the product makes me, we yank it from the shelves.”
Although Gottlieb can’t say for sure what the future holds for Native Sun, he does know that the company will continue to serve as the organic watchdog for its consumer.
“When we make our decisions, each one has multi layers of protection for the customer and that’s how it will always be,” he said. “As I’m growing, I want to continue to protect the consumers’ food supply before they even know its being attacked.”