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Production and
Processing Standards of Regulations
Accreditation is an assessment of
competence of an organisation to conduct certain activities; in our field of
activity this means an assessment of the competence to conduct organic
certification against certain requirements using a reference standard.
This standard may be a private
standard, a voluntary international standard or a regulation.
In the past the IOAS has offered
accreditation against ISO Guide 65 with scope of a private standard which
has additionally been assessed for equivalence against a regulation,
typically (EEC) 2092/91. Accreditation however has nothing to do with
equivalence assessment and so from March 2008, the IOAS have established a
separate programme to conduct equivalence assessment.
In practice this means that IOAS
ISO Guide 65 accreditation will not involve any assessment of standards,
just their correct implementation. Where a certification organisation
outside of the EU has no standard of their own and they issue the EU
regulation itself to operators, the IOAS accreditation verifies that the
organisation complies with ISO Guide 65 and implements the production and
processing standards contained in the EU regulation. It does not verify that
the organisation is performing inspection according to Annex III or
complying with any of the administrative rules and procedures contained in
that regulation. Accreditation certificates will state that 'Certifier XXX
has been duly evaluated and found to be in compliance with ISO65 with the
scope of Regulation EEC 2092/91 Production and Processing Standards'.
What clauses of regulation EEC
2092/91 do IOAS consider to make up the 'Production and Processing
Standards'? See downloadable file - coming soon.
As the regulation (EC) 2092/91 and
the new 834/2007 requires third country certification organisations or
control bodies to demonstrate equivalence, most certification organisations
will wish to demonstrate that they do perform inspection and control
procedures and handle any relevant administrative procedures in an
equivalent way to that required by that regulation. In this case the
organisation must apply to IOAS under the European Recogntion
programme. This programme is explained here.
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