Guidance on organic
08/10/2008
The three organisations that have joint responsibility for the global organic agricultural sector have combined to issue two new tools that should give users and consumers extra confidence in products, including fibres, that claim organic status.
Faced with an ongoing debate about what criteria a product had to meet to merit an organic label, the United Nations Conference for Trade and Development, the Food and Agriculture Organistion and the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements combined to form an international task force to examine the subject.
Since 2003, this task force has been working to find ways of harmonising organic status criteria and on establishing parallels between production of different crops in different parts of the world.
The task force met in Geneva at the start of October and announced that it had devised the two tools.
The first of these, the EquiTool, is a guide to help decision-makers assess whether an organic production and processing standard applicable in one region of the world is equivalent (that is, not identical but equally valid) to another organic standard.
The second tool is called the International Requirements for Organic Certification Bodies, a minimum set of performance requirements for groups that make decisions on organic status.
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