What’s Behind the Organic Label?

Organic food is a complicated industry. For organic produce to be certified, farms must undergo rigorous checks from independent governmental or regulatory inspectors to ensure they adhere to organic principles. But exactly what standards qualify food as organic?

 Organic Certification Standards

European Commission. Frequently asked questions on organic rules. Accessed 10/09/2020.

The main parts of EU organic certification relate to: 

1. Reducing environmental impact and improving sustainability
2. Limiting chemical pesticides and antibiotics
3. Avoiding genetically modified (GM) produce
4. Ensuring animal welfare

[1] The main parts of EU organic certification relate to production standards, environmental protection, animal welfare, and transparent labeling to ensure food authenticity and sustainability.

Reducing environmental impact and improving sustainability

Organic produce reduces environmental impact and improves the land's sustainability. This is achieved by fertilising the soil using organic material (manure and compost) and rotating crops multi-annually. This type of farming has been around for centuries and is a key part of ensuring all the necessary nutrients are in the soil. 

[2] Organic farming reduces environmental impact and improves sustainability by promoting biodiversity, conserving water, enhancing soil health, and minimizing the use of synthetic inputs.

Limiting chemical pesticides & antibiotics

For produce to be certified organic, conventional pesticides and unnatural food additives must be banned. Both the farm and the produce must be certified, and organic farmers use natural products to keep the process organic. Antibiotics can only be used when absolutely necessary, such as when animals are sick.

Avoiding genetic modification

Similarly, to avoid genetically modified (GM) produce, EU-certified organic produce (or imported from outside the EU) cannot be genetically modified. Longitudinal data from the USA has indicated that for at least some produce, the increased use of herbicides that is often related to GMO

This stands for Genetically Modified Organism, and it's a living thing which has had its DNA altered by the insertion of the DNA of another living thing. This organism could even be from another species. If it has genes, it's possible.

[3] Organic farming avoids genetic modification by strictly prohibiting the use of GMOs, ensuring natural growth processes and preserving biodiversity.

 herbicide

Commonly known as weed killers, these are chemical substances used to get rid of pesky weeds.

-resistant crops has a negative effect on the environment through increased contamination of local ecosystems.

How to identify organic food: organic food logo labels

In theory, it should be easy to identify organic products on the shelves since they should carry an organic logo. However, it’s not quite that simple, as there are many different organic certifications and labels with organic food logos on the packaging. While the many logos and certifications can be confusing, they can also provide additional information that increases our trust in a product.

EU organic certification

the EU organic label used to denote certified organic food

Is the main label used to denote certified organic food. This has been a mandatory label since 2010 for all organic food produced in the EU or imported into the EU. This guarantees that a product contains at least 95% organic ingredients, and the remaining 5% of ingredients are also closely controlled.  The EU leaf certifies the organic principles have been followed. 

National & industry organic certification

However, there are multiple organisations at both the national level (such as the UK’s Soil Association, in the UK) and at the industry level (such as Demeter, which is based in Germany,) which certify organic food at even higher standards than those demanded by EU regulations. This helps differentiate the organic products that hold themselves to the highest standard, although understanding the various different logos in your country can often be quite the task!

Can we prove that ‘organic’ food really is organic?

Even with these organic food logos and the certifications behind them, many producers are still misleading shoppers by falsely marketing their produce as organic, which undermines trust in organic food logo labels. Luckily, researchers are developing new methods to increase traceability in the food chain, which will eventually help minimise fraudulent organic foods.

Inspecting organic farms

[4] Inspecting organic farms ensures compliance with strict standards, verifying practices that protect ecosystems, animal welfare, and the integrity of organic products.

The first approach is to put extensive procedures in place to regularly check farms and test products to ensure they are not using unauthorized pesticides, additives or antibiotics. However, such rigorous checks are difficult to conduct regularly on every piece of organic produce, especially those coming from outside the EU.