If the new law remains in place, she said, it "could weaken the national organic program".
It remains one of the most active certifiers licensed by the department's organic program.
It requires that farmers use most of the same techniques as the federal organic program, but without the paperwork.
Ms. Bushway said the organic program never had the resources to keep up with the industry's growth.
The government's organic program, says Joan Shaffer, a spokeswoman for the Agriculture Department, "is a marketing program that sets standards for what can be certified as organic.
The report also said that the organic program had failed to adequately vet several of the independent certifying agents it allowed to approve organic operations in foreign countries.
He said a pilot organic program the company tried in Buffalo "didn't get much acceptance" because it was ineffective in controlling weeds.
The inspector general's report focused largely on conditions at the organic program at the end of the Bush administration, from 2006 through 2008.
"Organic is becoming what we hoped it would be an alternative to," says Roger Blobaum, who played a key role as a consumer advocate in pushing Congress to establish the U.S.D.A.'s fledgling organic program.
Harvard's president, Drew Gilpin Faust, who last year started a university effort to reduce greenhouse gases by 30percentt by 2016, has adopted the organic program at Elmwood, the president's house on Brattle Street.
