Because he wanted to label his poultry “organic” when it wasn’t.

Congress voted last week to dilute the definition of organic, but it’s not the first time the standards have been relaxed.

There was a flap over chicken feed a few years back, when a Georgia poultry producer, Fieldale Farms, persuaded representative Nathan Deal, Republican of Georgia, to insert a provision into a spending bill that would grant Fieldale Farms permission to label its poultry “organically grown” even though the chickens were raised on conventionally grown grains.

Fieldale Farms claimed that there was a shortage of organically grown grain, and that, to be fair, if organic feed was commercially available only at more than twice the price of conventional feed, the Agriculture Department could not enforce regulations requiring that livestock labeled “organically raised” be fed only organic feed.

According to the USDA, however, there was an ample supply of affordable organic grain. Nonetheless, the provision became law, to the consternation of organic food advocates as well as agribusiness giant Tyson, who understood that if the organic standards didn’t stand for anything, they’d be worth nothing.

Evidently it pays to protest, because in a matter of weeks the provision was repealed.

So will the organic food standards survive this latest attack? Well, to paraphrase Bill Clinton, it depends on what the meaning of “organic” is.