Center for Food Safety

CFS works at the intersection of law, science, and advocacy to ensure that "Organic" means what consumers think it does. Since federal organic standards were first proposed in the 1990s, we have watchdogged organic production standards, provided expert pro bono legal counsel, and gone to court when necessary to prevent loopholes and weaken the standard's integrity. From whether pesticides and genetically engineered crops are permissible to safeguarding animal welfare requirements for organic livestock, CFS fights to keep the Organic label honest. CFS attends Expo West to support brands doing the right thing, and to hold regulators and corporations accountable for undermining trust in our food system. Our work extends beyond organic integrity to the fundamental right to know what is in our food and what we feed our families. We achieved the first-ever mandated genetically engineered food labeling, and we have successfully challenged in court false and misleading food product labeling. CFS also wins lawsuits to stop the use of toxic pesticides that harm pollinators, wildlife, and human health. Our landmark body of caselaw covers everything from drift-prone herbicides like Monsanto's dicamba, to cancer-causing glyphosate, pesticide-coated, neonicotinoid seeds that kill birds and bees, to protecting monarch butterflies under the Endangered Species Act from pesticide harms, as well as the recent alarming use of PFAS "forever chemicals" as pesticides on food crops.