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Letis
S.A. - Argentina
The acronym LETIS stands
for loyalty, ethics, transparency, independence and solutions.
It is a privately owned
certification body and its sole interest is in inspection and certification,
mainly of organic enterprises but it also provides a Quality, GLOBALGAP
Certification and private standards, and has marks available for all
programmes.
LETIS was established in
1997 with the vision of being a reference in Organic Certification with
national and international Organic Programmes. LETIS´ growth relies on
expertise and trained professionals. Its Programmes are established in
Argentina as well as in Chile, Paraguay and Canada, certifying organic
products for markets all over the world.
Nowadays LETIS, now
10 years old, has three offices. The main office is placed in Rosario, one
in Buenos Aires and the other in Santiago, Chile. LETIS also has
three regional coordinators, one in Rio Negro- Neuquen, another one in
Mendoza and the last one in Quebec.
LETIS performs its own
inspection work with in-house and contracted inspectors. Its Standards
Committee has developed standards such as organic wine and organic
aquaculture. With the aim of giving transparency and reliability to the
Certification Process, all technical certification decisions are made by a
stakeholder Certification Committee and then subsequently ratified by the
Direction Committee. An Advisory Board meets every year with powers and
oversight over policy and procedural amendments.
LETIS S.A. was first
authorised by the Argentine authorities SENASA in 1998 and has since been
added to the list of approved certification bodies under Argentina on the EU
Third Country list in the year 2000 as well as working with Bio Suisse and
accredited by the USDA- NOP in 2002. LETIS were awarded IFOAM accreditation
and ISO 65 by OAA (Argentine Accreditation Organism) in 2005.
The LETIS IFOAM Programme
and the BIO CERT Programme are the two Organic Programmes owned by LETIS.
The LETIS IFOAM Programme covers crop production, livestock, wild harvest
products, processing and handling, product acceptance procedures,
aquaculture and Small Producers Certification. There are no activities
excluded from their scope. LETIS are moving to an electronic certification
service in 2008.
Patricia I. García - General Director
Mónica De Nicola -Quality Director |
