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Latest news
May 7: The IOAS Operating
Manual for Canada accreditation is now available. Download it
here.
April 10: IOAS received a
letter from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency indicating IOAS
compliance with the Canadian Organic Regime with regard to its
application to be an approved Accreditation Advisory Body. The letter
stated that 'The Canada Organic Office is satisfied with the level of
compliance with the Canada Organic Regime and would like to inform you
that the next step from the recognition of International Organic
Accreditation Service (IOAS) as an accreditation body under Canada
Organic Regime is the signing of the agreement between International
Organic Accreditation Service (IOAS) and CFIA'
View full letter.
April 7: Gergana Nentcheva of
Bulgaria commenced work with the IOAS as our new Client Manager. Gergana
was previously General Manager of Balkan Biocert in Bulgaria and brings
with her a wealth of experience in the organic sector.
Meet Gergana.
April 3: The National Organic
Standards Board in the USA issued their latest guidance proposals on 'commercial
availability of organic seed'. The proposals add more detail to guidance
issued in 2005 and include measures for operators and ACAs (certification
bodies). The
proposal will be discussed in the May 20-22 meeting of the NOSB.
March 25: The European Commission
released a further draft of the implementing rules for imports under
Articles 32 and 33 of EC 834/2007. The rules explain the process by which
third countries and certification bodies will be to apply to be placed on
the various 'approved' lists. The main change since the previous draft in
November 2007 is that the initial time period for certification bodies to
apply for equivalence has been extended from 6 to 12 months and for
compliance from 6 months to 3 years. The IOAS expect these rules to be
approved in mid 2008.
March 14: The Canadian Organic
Office (COO) completed their audit today of the IOAS as part of their
assessment for approval as an Accreditation Advisory Body under the Canadian
Organic Regime. Lead auditor Valeriya Staykova visited the IOAS Jamestown
office and did a witness audit of an IOAS surveillance visit in the USA. The
COO expect to make public the list of approved Accreditation Advisory Bodies
in April 2008. More ....
February 8: USDA announce
reorganisation and leadership changes to the National Organic Programme.
The NOP is reorganizing into three branches: Standards Development &
Review; Accreditation, Auditing & Training; and Compliance & Enforcement.
Deputy Administrator for Transportation & Marketing Programs Barbara
Robinson will assume overall leadership for the NOP in addition to her
other duties, while Mark Bradley will assume leadership for the
Accreditation, Auditing & Training Branch, and Richard Mathews will head
up the Standards Development & Review Branch. No decision has been made
for leadership of Compliance & Enforcement at this time. Also underway
is the creation of an electronic reading room, where all NOP records
that can be made publicly available will be accessible electronically,
including a new Q&A site to provide answers to questions posed to NOP.
More .....
February 7: A meeting between
Canadian officials and the EU Commission is planned for March 10-11 to
discuss programme equivalency.
February 6: Canadian Trade
delegation meets US officials to begin talks on country equivalency. On
February 6 a Canadian delegation including representatives of the Canadian
Food Inspection Agency, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the
Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade are in Washington
D.C. to meet with US officials and begin talks on equivalency between
the two country's regulatory programs.
January 30: The IOAS are offering three training
course in 2008; two courses on 'Management of Organic Certification' and
one course on 'Assesment of Organic Certification Bodies'
January
28: The recent meeting
of the Standing Committee on Organic Farming has approved a new logo for
use on organic products in Europe.
January 25:
The IOAS wishes to appoint another Client Manager
to its team. Closing date for applications is February 20, 2008.
November 16:
The
European Commission published draft
detailed import rules which, once finalised, will
eventually be brought under a separate regulation. The rules provide a
clearer idea on the various compliance and equivalence routes for product
entry into Europe.
October 30: The IOAS is working in
partnership with trade organisations in the USA to determine appropriate
methods retailers could undertake to limit the incidence of fraudulently
traded organic products and to increase the chances of early detection when
it takes place within the retail supply chain.
More .....
October 2/3:
60 experts from organic trade businesses, organic certification bodies
and the competent authorities met in FiBL in Frick, Switzerland to
discuss measures to prevent and detect fraud in organic agriculture. The
IOAS was a co-organiser and presenter at the event which involved
participants from 12 countries.
More....
September 28: The three day IOAS course
on 'Management of Organic Certification' finished today in the USA. This
first course was attended by 19 participants, all from certifying agents
in the USA from the private and state sectors. For future courses check
here.
September 21: The
Standing Committee on Organic Farming that advises the EU Commission met
today to discuss the next steps for finalising the implementtion rules for
the new organic farming regulation EC 834/2007. The planned consultation
will now not be a full public consultation but to organisations on the
Commissions organic consultative committee as well as Member States. The
deadline for this round is end of October with an expected draft of the
implementing rules in January 2008.
September 20: The three and a half day IOAS
training course on 'Assessment of Organic Certification Bodies' finished
today in Switzerland. The third course of this type took place at the
Research Institute for Organic Farming (FiBL) in Frick. The 7 participants
were from accreditation bodies, government authorities and certification
bodies with country representation of Albania, Austria, Canada, Finland,
Ireland, Italy and Rumania. For future courses check
here.
August
30: The USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) has entered into a consent
agreement with Aurora Organic Dairy (Aurora) in response to a Notice of
Proposed Revocation issued earlier this year alleging violations of
National Organic Program (NOP) regulations.
Under the consent agreement, Aurora's Platteville, Colo., facility must
meet several conditions in order to continue to operate as a certified
organic dairy operation. These conditions include removing certain
animals from the organic herd and ceasing to apply the organic label to
certain milk. Additionally, AMS will exercise increased scrutiny over
Aurora's operations during a one-year probationary review period. If
Aurora does not abide by the agreement during that time, AMS may
withdraw from the agreement and could revoke the organic certification
for Aurora's Platteville, Colo., plant. More information on
USDA NOP site.
August
14:
Organska Kontrola of Bosnia & Herzogovina has recently been granted
accreditation by IOAS against IFOAM Norms and Guide ISO/IEC65. The
scope of the ISO65 accreditation is the Organska Kontrola standards and
seal programme. The certification body is based in Sarajevo. Contact
them at
office@organskakontrola.ba
August
3: The
IOAS announce a new application for assessment against IFOAM Norms from
TECPAR, Brasil. The Instituto de Tecnologia do Paraná, a public
company, is located in the city of Curitiba. The contact person is Vera
Kamienski at verak@tecpar.br
August
1: Angela Jackson, former
Director of the Organic Grass Fed Beef Coalition, has joined the IOAS today
as a new staff member. Angela lives in Vermillion, South
Dakota. As well as being trained and working as an organic inspector
she has a background in information technology.
July
10:
Two new applicant certification bodies - LibanCert of Beirut,
Lebanon and Ecoinspect of Romania
have both recently applied to
IOAS for ISO/IEC 65 accreditation. The contact persons are Roula Fares for
LibanCert (roula@libancert.com) and
Pirosca Lorencz for Ecoinspect (ecoinspect@from.ro)
June 12:
European Union agriculture ministers reached agreement today on a new
regulation on organic production and labeling. After over 18 months of
discussions, the new rules:
1. require mandatory use of the EU logo, although national and private logos
may appear alongside;
2. require the use of the organic logo may only be applied on 95% products
3. require that the general limit (for all foods) of 0.9% accidental
presence of GMOs will also apply to organic foods but foods with any higher
contamination levels will not be able to be sold as organic;
4. aligns the organic control system to the general one in the EU for food
and feed;
5. do not regulate restaurants and food catering but will allow Member
States to do so;
6. adds rules for organic wine, aquaculture, seaweed and yeast.
7. confirms the import arrangements published in December 2006.
May
31:
IFOAM Accredited certification bodies and members of the IFOAM CB forum
meet in Bonn today to discuss smallholder group certification. The
workshop planning is based on four guidelines/requirements for group
certification. These can be downloaded here:
1. European Commission Guidelines for Organic Producer Group Certification:
http://www.ifoam.org/about_ifoam/standards/CB_Forum/EU_Guidance_Doc_Group_Cert.pdf
2. USDA National Organic Standards Board Recommendations for Certification
of Grower Groups:
http://www.ifoam.org/about_ifoam/standards/CB_Forum/NOSB_Grower_Groups.pdf
3. IFOAM Accrediation Criteria for Group Certification:
http://www.ifoam.org/about_ifoam/standards/ics/IAC_Group_Cert.pdf
4. Compiled Results of IFOAM Workshops on Smallholder Group
Certification: http://www.ifoam.org/about_ifoam/standards/ics/Compiled_IFOAM_Smallholder_WS_Results.pdf
May
16:
IFOAM release new draft organic standard for comment. The IFOAM
invite to comment stated ' This new Benchmark
is the result of a process that was started in 2005 to comprehensively
revise the IFOAM Basic Standards and other parts of IFOAM’s Organic
Guarantee System (OGS). The System is being re-designed to make it more
accessible for organic producers, processors, traders, standards-setting
bodies, certification bodies, accreditation bodies, governments and other
stakeholders.
The plan for creating more accessibility of the private international
Organic Guarantee System includes establishing a baseline for organic
standards – one that differentiates organic systems from conventional
ones, rather than differentiating some organic systems from others.
Therefore the role of the Benchmark is to set the essential requirements for
the development of organic standards as well as provide flexibility to
recognize differences throughout the world such as in agro-ecosystems, basic
infrastructure and the stage of organic sector development.
www.ifoam.org/about_ifoam/standards/OGS_Revision/IBS_Revision_Draft_20070416.doc
Comments are due by 14 June, 2007. Send comments
to M.Fecht@ifoam.org
May
10
:
IFOAM opens IFOAM Accreditation to accreditors other than the IOAS. The
'IFOAM In Action' newsletter announces that 'IFOAM Accreditation will
.... be more accessible through an expanded cooperation of IOAS and
other accreditation bodies ( mainly the “National Accreditation Bodies”)
to provide IFOAM accreditation. This decision was taken by IFOAM’s World
Board in March, 2007. Details for implementing it are still being worked out
between IFOAM and the IOAS.
May 2:
USDA NOPopens up discussion on smallholder certification. A message from the Deputy Administrator
Barbara Robinson was posted on the USDA NOP web site to clarify the USDA
approach to certification of smallholder groups. It states that the USDA
will 'do rulemaking to address the concerns that we have in the Program, but
... NOP will also collaborate with the Board about this – this will be a
topic on the fall meeting agenda for the NOSB'.
.... 'ACAs are reminded that as long as they use the NOSB recommendation for
interim guidance, no enforcement action will be taken by the Program related
to grower group certification.' See the full details at
www.ams.usda.gov/nop/GrowerGroupsLetter.html
February 25:
USDA NOP
withdraws acceptance of smallholder group certification. Although the
USDA have not issued a formal, written notice on the topic, certifiers at
a NOP training meeting were informed in January that products certified
based upon internal control systems which delegate control tasks in part
to the operator organisation would not be accepted under the NOP. The
decision appears to have emerged from an appeal case ruling of October
2006 that was dealt with by USDA and only recently (March 15, 2007)
published on the NOP web site at http://www.ams.usda.gov/nop/Compliance/AppealsSummaries/Sept05-Mar07.pdf
Based on an appeal by a Mexican group against their certifying agent, the
ruling was reported as finding 'the certifying agent's policies and
procedures for the certification of community grower groups were deemed
inconsistent with the NOP and had been implemented prematurely prior to
evaluation by the NOP' and concluded
that the 'use of an internal inspection system as a proxy for mandatory
on-site inspections of each production unit by the certifying agent is not
permitted.'
February 14:
European Commission publish draft amendments on 'New Approach'. The
European Commission adopted its proposals for a Council and European
Parliament Regulation and Decision within the framework of the revision of
the new approach and which is
now currently under consideration by the
European Parliament and the Council of Ministers.
The Commission Proposal organises accreditation at the national and
European levels; irrespective of the different sectors of activity in
which accreditation is used. The proposal 'insists on the public authority
nature of accreditation in order for it to be the last level of public
authority control, and sets the framework for the recognition of the
existing organisation European co-operation for Accreditation (EA) so as
to ensure the proper functioning of a rigorous peer evaluation.' The
proposal also introduces market surveillance and intervention
measures and relies on customs authorities for controlling products from third
countries. The proposal specifically mentions that these new
arrangements will cover organic products. See http://ec.europa.eu/enterprise/newapproach/review_en.htm
December 21, 2006:
EU
Commission publishes new import rules. In late December the
European Commission approved amendments to Regulation EEC 2092/91, Article
11, which will affect the import of organic products into Europe. The
main change is the gradual phase out of the case-by-case product approval (the
so-called importer derogation) managed by Member State authorities,
to be replaced by direct approval of third country certification bodies
(without the need for a country conformity assessment system to be
approved). The direct approvals will be under the authority of the
Commission itself and (for CBs outside of Europe) will be able to be done
on a full compliance basis (accreditation against ISO/IEC 65 with scope of
EU Regulation) or on an equivalence basis (formal accreditation not
required and to equivalent criteria and standards). Both systems will
however require surveillance by an accreditation body or authority.
The Third Country list system will continue.
December 21, 2006:
Canadian authorities publishes new organic regulation. The
Organic Products Regulations of Canada were finally published bringing in
requirements for another major market for organic produce where before there
were none (or at least not in a harmonised sense across the territory). The
main implications for certification bodies working within Canada is that
they will have to be formally accredited by the Canadian Food Inspection
Agency through one of a number of approved accreditors. For those certifying
exports to the territory, access may either be through equivalency
recognition of a country system or by direct accreditation. The regulation
is available at http://canadgazette.gc.ca/part
II/2006/20061221-x6/html/extra-e.htmland
the Canadian Organic Standards are available at
http://www.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/cgsb/on_the_net/organic/index-e.html
December 12, 2006:
Paraguay passes new organic regulation. Law available in Spanish
only.
590kb
November 21, 2006:
Bolivia passes new organic regulation. Law available in Spanish
only.
548kb
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