The Organic Standard

worldwide will be assessed on the differentways governments use voluntary standards initiatives to deliver on their own public policy objectives. The results of the research will be presented at a high-level conference later this year, organised in collaboration between ISEAL Alliance and ENTWINED research partnership.
Some examples of voluntary standards used by governments around the world are:
• In collaboration with IFOAM.
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Government engagement with voluntary standards

he International Social and Environmental Accreditation and Labelling (ISEAL) Alliance, in collaboration with the Trade Standard Practitioners’ Network (TSPN), are conducting research on the reasons governments engage in voluntary standard initiatives and the approaches they take. The objective of the research is to identify good practice in this area, and to create a space for dialogue and innovation. Examples of government engagements

        At the Conference the European Group presented the proposed new organic and natural cosmetic standards as they have been agreed so far. The audience consisted of members of certification bodies, cosmetic industry, consumer associations, consultants and other interested parties. The session, entitled ‘European Working Group for the Common European Standard: A better understanding of all technical and certifying aspects’, was presented by Valérie Lemaire, Ecoproducts and Cosmetics Head Manager at Ecocert, France.
        It was explained to the audience that the Group proposed the European harmonised standard should have two levels of certification: natural and organic. These were defined as:
1. ‘Natural’: no defined minimum percentage of organic ingredients, but no more than 5% of the product may be of synthetic origin (preservative
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very August The Organic Standard (TOS) comes out as two separate documents. The main document is the annual edition of The Organic Certification Directory. Listed by country in alphabetical order, this publication contains the names, contact details and other useful data of organic certification bodies throughout the world.

Uncertain future for
cosmetic standards

Problems in the harmonisation of organic and natural cosmetic standards still unsolved

arlier this year, TOS (issue 84, page 5), reported on the efforts of an European Working Group to produce harmonised European cosmetic standards. Such standards can then be adopted by the EU Commission to regulate the sector at official level. The Group, set up by the main standard setting organisations working with organic or natural cosmetics, intended to present the first draft of the standards at the Natural Cosmetic Conference of the 16th Organic World Congress of IFOAM, held in Modena, Italy, in June. The standards would then have been made open for public comments. However, members of Group were unable to reach a final agreement on some of the fundamental points and, therefore, no draft was produced. Further discussions within the Group are now still necessary.

It is a valuable reference document, and a must for any organic desk.
In addition to The Organic Certification Directory there is this document. More similar to the normal TOS issues, this
publication contains up-to-date news items of concern to the world wide organic movement.
In September, TOS goes back to its normal format, i.e a single document of 18 pages.

Double value