California Court Finds No Private Right of Action For Mislabeled Organic Products
Quesada v. Herb Thyme Farms, Inc., No. B239602, 2013 Cal. App. LEXIS 1041 (Cal. Ct. App. Dec. 23, 2013)
A California court of appeals has held, in a case of first impression, that the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990 (OFPA), 7 U.S.C. § 6501 et seq., precludes private state law claims involving organic certification and labeling of organic products. This preemption, the court found, ensures national consistency in the production and labeling of agricultural products as “organic.”
In Quesada, the plaintiff filed a class action lawsuit against an organic herb grower, alleging that the grower had mislabeled its product as “fresh organic” and had used the “USDA Organic” graphic on its product packaging, even though its product contained a mix of organically and conventionally grown herbs. Specifically, the plaintiff asserted state law claims of unfair and deceptive trade practices, false advertising, and unfair competition. The complaint did not cite the OFPA or California’s federally-approved California Organic Products Act of 2003 (COPA), Food & Agr. Code § 46000 et seq. The plaintiff argued that she was not seeking to enforce federal regulations, but was instead making only state law claims for organic labeling violations.
The court disagreed, finding that the plaintiff’s claims, regardless of how they were presented, would require proof of facts that—if found by a certification agent—would have led to a revocation of the grower’s organic certification. Such claims, found the court, were impliedly preempted because they would stand as an obstacle to Congress’s expressed purpose of establishing national standards for organic production and labeling of agricultural products.
The court explained that although Congress has permitted states to establish organic certification programs, those programs must be federally approved. Any state programs existing before the OFPA’s enactment were expressly preempted by the Act. As such, COPA, like other state programs, is not a state organic standard, but a national organic program administered through state agencies. Congress intended that enforcement responsibilities for OFPA would be shared by the federal Secretary of Agriculture and the governing state officials in states that had implemented federally-approved programs like COPA. Allowing a private right of action under unfair competition laws based on violations of COPA, the court reasoned, would conflict with the clear congressional intent to preclude private enforcement of national organic standards.
In reaching this decision, the court relied upon the holdi ng of In re Aurora Dairy Corp. Organic Milk Marketing and Sales Practice Litigation, , 621 F.3d 781 (8th Cir. 2010), where the court concluded that state of Colorado consumer law claims against a certified milk producer for mislabeling non-organic milk as organic were impliedly preempted. The court agreed with the finding in Aurora Dairy that the stated purpose of the OFPA to establish national standards demonstrated Congress’s intent to preempt state consumer lawsuits.
The Quesada court specifically noted that it was reaching the opposite conclusion from the federal district court in Jones v. ConAgra Foods, Inc., 912 F. Supp.2d 889 (N.D. Cal. 2012). In Jones, the court did not dismiss a potential class action claiming that the defendant’s products contained OFPA-prohibited elements. In rejecting Jones, the court reasoned that the court had erroneously failed to account for the federal approval and oversight of California’s COPA when it reached the conclusion that implied preemption did not bar a private cause of action in organic labeling cases.
Based on the court’s opinion, and how it analyzed the other applicable court opinions, it appears that it is critical to distinguish between a basic organic certification claim such as “USDA Organic,” and a claim that extends beyond that by including labeling and advertising claims.