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USDA Organic Certification 2023
USDA Organic Certification 2023

Hungry Harvest’s Label Changes, Packaging Updates, and More!

Eleanor avatar
Written by Eleanor
Updated over a year ago

We’re excited to announce that we’ve been organically certified in 2023! This is a certification that will soon be required of all online grocery retailers, but we’ve been working on this for a year to ensure that we can provide you with 100% certified organic produce in your harvests.

What does this certification mean?

This certification from the USDA means that we are certified to handle and distribute organic produce. This isn’t a change to how we’ve always processed organic items in our warehouse, but rather a new regulation on online retailers that ensures we’re keeping up with standardized best practices in our industry (online direct-to-consumer grocery retail).

Does this change how organic produce will be priced?

Nope! We’ll continue in our best efforts to get you the best prices that we can for organic products.

What will change?

Organic certification comes with a few guidelines that we have to follow which will result in changes to how we label and package organic products:

  1. Labeling - Organic items have to be labeled separately from conventional items. This means starting in October 2023, you’ll see two labels on your harvest if you have organic AND conventional items in your harvest, and add-ons will be listed on a separate label from your harvest. If you order an organic harvest with us (that has conventional non-produce items added) these will be on a separate label to ensure we comply with the guidelines.

  1. Packaging - According to these USDA guidelines, organic and conventional items must be separated by a non-porous divider in your harvest. This means that if you order both conventional and organic items, the organic items will be wrapped in plastic and placed under a brown paper shield. This means that for the time being, to comply with these regulations, you may see an uptick in the plastic packaging in your harvest.

I’m worried about plastic use. Can you take out the plastic that organic items will come wrapped in?

At the moment, we’re doing all that we can to find an alternative solution to using disposable plastic in your harvest. However, we had to implement this change on a time-sensitive basis, which is currently limiting our alternatives to plastic. We’re working on finding sustainable options (compostable bags, reusable containers) that will help us to reduce the overall amount of plastic used in the future - stay tuned for updates!

Is anything changing about how you handle organic produce?

No! We’ve been handling organic produce separately from conventional produce throughout our history. The only difference now is that the USDA is requiring a certification from online produce retailers.

We want to be utterly transparent about these changes and why you may see some differences in the labeling and packing of your harvest. If you have additional questions about these requirements, please feel free to check out the information at usda.gov, or to reach out via [email protected] with any questions!

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