Further EU organic regulation amendments
Another amendment to the EU Organic Regulation has been made and comes into effect on Monday 3rd February. This relates to import/export from third countries (outside the EU) and clarifies that the certificate of inspection (COI) must be issued by the certification body of the exporter before the consignment leaves the third country of export or origin.
Due to feedback received regarding the difficulty in final transport documents being available in advance of the day of export, the European Commission has allowed some of the transport information on the COI to be filled out provisionally at the time of issue. However, all information must be completed within 10 days of issuing the COI and, in any case, before endorsement of the COI from the importing authority. This is currently within the guidance of the relevant standard, until a further EU amendment makes it officially part of the standard. You can also read our certification news article on our website.
In addition to updates that have been made to reflect the amended EU Organic Regulation, a small number of wording changes have been made to some standards and guidance to provide further clarification for licensees. Download a summary of all of the changes in the Soil Association Standards and the EU Equivalent Standards for more information. Please note: these summaries do not include small changes to formatting, spelling and grammar.
The updated versions of Soil Association Standards and the EU Equivalent Organic Standards are version number 18.3 and 1.3, respectively, and have replaced previous versions on the website. Please note that these changes only effect the Farming and Growing standards, and the Food and Drink standards.