An Oregon hazelnut grower wants a federal appeals court to reinstate his lawsuit alleging that USDA’s organic regulations unlawfully favor overseas agribusiness firms.

Bruce Kaser, owner of Pratum Farm near Salem, Ore., has told the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that his federal complaint against the organic rules was wrongly dismissed for lack of standing.

The USDA’s regulations have allowed agribusiness “aggregators” in Turkey to obtain organic certification for numerous farms even though only 2% are inspected as required by law, according to his appeal.

“The resulting public deception and confusion harms the reputation and integrity of the USDA seal, with the reputational harm extending to Pratum Farm as a single-farm organic certificate holder,” the document said. “In addition to the deception and confusion, the rule enables Turkish aggregators to acquire licensed use of the USDA seal at practically no cost, relatively speaking, which is a factor that enables cheap imports of illegally labeled Turkish hazelnuts to suppress Pratum Farm’s prices in markets that value organic integrity.”

In a lawsuit filed last year, Kaser claimed that USDA’s rules have depressed the price of organic hazelnuts in the U.S. due to price competition from Turkish imports that weren’t held to the same expensive inspection and certification standards.

By effectively allowing 98% of Turkish farms to avoid organic inspections, the USDA has permitted agribusiness aggregators to circumvent requirements established by Congress in the Organic Food Production Act, the complaint said.

U.S. District Judge Anne Aiken dismissed the lawsuit in late September, agreeing with USDA that Kaser’s Pratum Farm didn’t prove it’d been harmed by the agency’s organic rules, which means the plaintiff does not have legal standing to pursue the allegations in federal court.

While the U.S. International Trade Commission found “fraud and noncompliant practices” among Turkish hazelnut exporters, the harm suffered by Kaser and other organic farmers doesn’t stem from the USDA’s rule itself, the judge said.

“Thus, to the extent plaintiff alleges that it is being placed at a competitive disadvantage, plaintiff attributes that disadvantage not to the challenged regulation, but to a failure on the part of its competitors to follow the law or a failure of USDA to adequately enforce it,” she said.

Kaser’s appeal to the 9th Circuit argues the ruling got it wrong because the USDA’s regulation is actually the “root cause of these problems,” as it’s enabled “false advertising” by Turkish aggregators who comply with the rule to use the organic seal for un-inspected farms.

“No one will disagree that false advertising involving the USDA seal harms consumers who want to buy organic food,” the appeal said. “However, it also harms those, like Pratum Farm, who rely on legitimate use of the label.”

The USDA should not legally be allowed to use the organic seal to “certify two inconsistent standards at the same time,” which damages the seal’s integrity and growers such as Pratum Farm who rely on its “goodwill” and “reputation,” according to Kaser’s appeal.

“This injury will be redressed if the 2% rule is declared outside statutory authority, which should put a practical end to the grower group certification scheme as a means for misusing the USDA seal,” he said.