Last week, USDA issued a fact sheet containing an Overview of USDA's BioPreferred Program (BioPreferred). BioPreferred was created in 2002 with the passing of the 2002 Farm Bill, and was recently expanded as part of the 2014 Farm Bill. This has resulted in the growth of BioPreferred to include more than 2,500 products in 100 different categories. BioPreferred has two main initiatives to support the biobased product marketplace. The first initiative is to provide a voluntary product certification and label to provide consumers with useful information about a product, and the second is mandatory purchasing requirements for federal agencies and contractors. Most recently, USDA has announced that Tide PurClean laundry detergent is a "certified biobased" product through BioPreferred that will become available to consumers within the next year.

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