Understanding the USDA's New Organic Certification Rules

John has been a staunch organic advocate and instigator in the organic community and industry for 30+ years. He spent 10+ years in organic inspections, reviews, and certification throughout North America and 10+ years with Earthbound Farm, starting with the founders and ending his time there as the Director of Supply Chain Strategy under ownership by Danone NA.  John has served on numerous industry Boards and Committees since 2000, including with IOIA, OMRI, OSA, and the NOSB as a Handler Representative from 2010-2015. In the last several years, he has consulted in Organic Certification & Accreditation, Strategic Business Development, Change Management, Organic R&D & Climate Change Mitigation. In 2020, he partnered with Bill Wolf and Wolf & Associates to build out the capacity, reach, and impact of the business and enhance the impact of organic food and agriculture for all. 

Joelle Mosso is an entrepreneurial scientist with a passion for pathogenic food microbiology, risk assessment, and working towards practical solutions for the food industry. Joelle currently is Western Growers Assoc. VP of Science Programs, working alongside growers to develop improved approaches to food safety and sustainability challenges. She has a background in Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment (QMRA), building microbial testing laboratories, evaluating and designing microbial diagnostic tools/approaches, and firsthand produce experience, managing food safety for complex international supply chains. Before Western Growers, she was Sr. Director of Technical & Regulatory Affairs for the Organic Trade Association (OTA), was the chief scientific officer for the Eurofins Produce, and held food safety and business leadership roles at Earthbound Farm and Olam Spice & Vegetable Ingredients. She holds a B.S from the University of Maryland in Microbiology with honors in Molecular Biology and holds a M.S. in Food Science focused on pathogenic food microbiology from the University of California, Davis. Joelle has served on numerous industry technical groups including the Center for Produce Safety Technical Committee, the International Fresh Produce Association (IFPA) Food Safety Council, USDA National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods (NACMCF), and the USDA National Organic Standards Board (NOSB).

In 2000, Steve Brazeel founded SunTerra Produce, which has grown from a one-person produce brokerage firm into an industry-leading, full-service platform handling sales, marketing, farming, food safety, harvesting, storage, and distribution activities for specialty crop producers on over 10,000 acres throughout the US and Mexico. Born out of SunTerra‘s participation in the USDA’s ground-breaking Farmers to Families Food Box program, Project FoodBox was launched in 2020. Since the program’s inception, the SunTerra/Project FoodBox teams have delivered over 85 Million pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables to communities in need through its network of food banks, community organizations, and health care plans.

Elevated Foods, founded by Mr. Brazeel in 2020, was recently awarded a $20M grant as part of USDA’s Partnerships for Climate Smart Commodities program. Elevated was formed to bring more profit to farmers by incentivizing the adoption of new technologies & practices and providing technical support to help make them more efficient and resilient.