New EU-US organics partnership announced

17 February 2012

We welcomed the news yesterday that the US Department of Agriculture and the EU have reached an agreement for the mutual recognition of the National Organic Program (NOP) and the EU organic regulations, effective from 1 June this year.

This is great news for organic producers and processors already certified to the EU regulations who are based in the EU and wish to supply ingredients and products for sale in the US, as they will no longer require additional certification in order to export their products.

Formal announcements and further information can be found here:

Joint press release

Questions and Answers

EU website

Products certified to the EU regulation will be able to bear the USDA organic logo, provided labels comply with all other NOP labelling requirements. The sole condition under this agreement for products sold in the US is that any livestock ingredients must not have been produced using antibiotics.

We will be contacting our licensees shortly to discuss the implications of this new arrangement.