In a politically driven maneuver to satisfy industrial agriculture, the USDA issued a withdrawal of new animal care standards for organic agriculture this week. The new standards eliminated the controversial porch system and ensured on-the-ground outdoor access for poultry, a condition currently unevenly applied in organic agriculture.

The USDA disregarded more than 63,000 comments supporting the new animal care standards and used contorted logic to rationalize the withdrawal. Those endorsing USDA’s action were less than 0.1 percent of comments, or only 50 of the 72,000 total comments received. About 8,000 comments were neutral.

Such a wide disparity demonstrates how the opinions of industrial livestock proponents such as the National Cattlemen’s and Beef Association and National Pork Producers Council, which have virtually no stake in the organic sector, strangle the agency. Their chief concern—that the rule would have vilified conventionally-raised livestock—has no merit. This is an attack on the innovation of organic farmers and businesses, who make a voluntary choice to be engaged in this marketplace. The industrial livestock advocate’s fallback position is to suppress substantial efforts to improve animal welfare. That position is losing in the marketplace as consumers seek more information on how their food is raised.

At Organic Valley, we are committed to meaningful outdoor access and strong animal care standards—not only for the farms in our cooperative, but also for all animals in organic livestock systems. Cows were meant to be on pasture, pigs to root in straw or mud and chickens to scratch in the dirt.

Our resolve is undeterred, and this fight is not over. We are proud to be a declarant and vested contributor in the Organic Trade Association’s legal challenge to USDA’s unprecedented action to reverse an established final rule and its use of procedural gymnastics to delay and ultimately kill this new standard.

USDA needs to be our partner in advancing organic food and agriculture, but right now, they are failing.

Organic Valley will continue to fight for these critical standards.

“The USDA is dead wrong on this and is crumbling under political pressure from big ag. This violates the trust of the organic community,” said George Siemon, CEO of Organic Valley. “Organic Valley is going to fight it, and we’re going to keep raising animals the right way. People who choose Organic Valley food can trust that.”