(Aug. 12, 2025 / JNS)
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which consists of 29 agencies with almost 100,000 employees at 4,500 locations in the country and abroad, is changing an option in a drop-down menu in its organic integrity database for users to identify their location as “Palestine, state of.”
The United States does not recognize an independent Palestinian state, and U.S. officials have said that other countries that have said that they intend to recognize such a state would reward the Hamas terror organization for its attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.
“Thank you for alerting us to this issue,” a USDA spokesperson told JNS. “The database is run by a contractor, and USDA is working immediately to change the listing to the State Department-recognized name.”
