You never know where you're going to get your organic news. The New York Post's Page Six column is reporting today that applications to the U.S. Patents & Trademarks Organization were filed for the name "Oprah's Organics" by entities listed at Winfrey's Harpo Inc. offices in Chicago and on Wilshire Boulevard.
Oprah. living the organic life on Maui.
According to the New York gossip rag, "The filings are to use the name for bath soaps, sunscreens, massage oils, hair products--and also for organic salad dressings and frozen vegetables, soups, beverages and snack dips." Additional applications for "Oprah's Farm" and "Oprah's Harvest" were also filed.
Apparently the filings are part of a plan to monetize some of Oprah's Maui property, which consists of hundreds of acres and encompasses a farm. A rep for Winfrey told the Post that the trademarks would "enable the farm to grow and distribute produce on Maui and throughout the Hawaiian Islands."
Oprah's Maui Shangri-La.Let's hope Oprah, who last week topped Forbes' 2012 list of highest-paid celebrities for earning a reported $165 million last year, will adopt the social enterprise model created by the late Paul Newman for his organic food company, Newman's Own. At his company's founding, Newman told New York Times' food critic Mimi Sheraton, "My profits will be divided between a number of tax-deductible charities and causes, some church-related, others for conservation and ecology and things like that."
Some of the pristine land on Maui that reportedly belongs to Oprah.According to Newman's Own website some $330 million has been donated to charitable organizations since 1982. Let's see if Oprah's Organics can earn the double halo of being free of toxins and philanthropic.