Updated Oct 22, 2026

How old USDA's organic certificate data is on its export date: 1,283 operations

As of Oct 22, 2026, the certifier data behind the 1,283 certified operations in USDA's October 1, 2026 export was a median 23 days old on the export date; 350 (27.3%) were more than 90 days old, the oldest 526 days. A change a certifier records after the export date reaches this site with the next monthly file.

Counted: the 1,283 certified operations with both dates on record, each once.

How we counted

Each certified operation in the dataset is counted once, by the days from the date its certifier last updated the record (Pub_Date) to the date of the USDA export it comes from. The median is the middle record's value.

import pandas as pd
d = pd.read_excel("INTEGRITY_Export_20261001.xlsx", dtype=str)
ops = d[(d.op_status == "Certified") & (d.opSC_HANDLING == "Certified")
        & d.opPA_country.str.startswith("United States", na=False) & (d.opEx_copacker == "Yes")]
lag = (pd.Timestamp("2026-10-01") - pd.to_datetime(ops.Pub_Date.str.strip(), format="%m/%d/%Y")).dt.days
print(len(lag), lag.quantile(0.5, interpolation="lower"), (lag > 90).sum(), lag.max())

Cite this

Organic Co-Packer Finder, “How old USDA's organic certificate data is on its export date: 1,283 operations”, Oct 22, 2026, https://organiccopackers.com/findings/how-old-usda-s-organic-certificate-data-is-on-its-export-date-operations/

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<figure style="margin:0;max-width:640px"><img src="https://organiccopackers.com/findings/how-old-usda-s-organic-certificate-data-is-on-its-export-date-operations/chart.svg" alt="How old USDA&#x27;s organic certificate data is on its export date: 1,283 operations" width="640" height="266" style="max-width:100%;height:auto" /><figcaption>As of Oct 22, 2026, the certifier data behind the 1,283 certified operations in USDA&#x27;s October 1, 2026 export was a median 23 days old on the export date; 350 (27.3%) were more than 90 days old, the oldest 526 days. A change a certifier records after the export date reaches this site with the next monthly file. Source: <a href="https://organiccopackers.com/findings/how-old-usda-s-organic-certificate-data-is-on-its-export-date-operations/">Organic Co-Packer Finder</a>.</figcaption></figure>

All findings from this site (3)