OF&G :: The Blog

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner in the EU organic logo competition!

And we can breathe something of a sigh of relief (at least we are here at OF&G) that the champ is the designer we considered to be the only real contender.

Here it is:

The winning design for the EU organic logo

The winning design was by German student, Dusan Milenkovic, so congratulations to him. From July 2010 this design will be seen on the packaging of organic products across the EU (there are caveats and grace periods to this, before anyone starts panicking they don’t have theirs sorted yet. Talk to your CO for details).

You can read the announcement press release for yourself here (PDF) and check out how the vote was split between the three designs here, and it demonstrates a scarily large amount of support for the strange hieroglyphic-like entry!

Now all that remains is to ensure everyone knows how and when to put this design to work on their packaging. Our licensees have had details on this on a number of occasions in recent months and we’ll be highlighting the issue again in our next newsletter.

Next year sees new regulation from the EU on managing salmonella in turkey flocks. Any producers potentially affected by this can read more in this very well explained piece from the Welsh Poultry Centre.

As the piece points out, salmonella is not actually *that* great of an issue in the UK, but it can be elsewhere in Europe and, as we’re all Europeans now, we’re all caught in this net. There are exclusions from the new testing regime, so if you’ve got turkeys, it’s well worth a read.

Sometimes, having to adhere to strict regulation can seem burdensome. However, especially when it comes to food, we have adapted and accepted the need for safeguards and reassurances.

Sometimes there are challenges, but when it comes to it, the consumer is better off knowing that there are governmental and non-governmental bodies looking out for their interests. When there is just one case of deception relating to organic food it is big headline news, precisely because it is so rare.

In some ways, we take this safety net for-granted, particularly in Europe and North America. That’s why the pains organic production in Australia seems to feel on an ongoing basis seem so alien to us. I think we often assume their structures and values almost precisely mirror our own (albeit that they take sport even more seriously than we do!).

We mentioned on here a while back (in May, actually) that things were not looking positive for organic regulation Down Under. Now comes a story from the Sydney Morning Herald about pork being passed-off as organic in restaurants. There’s some suggestion that it’s largely unintentional, at least on the part of the restaurateurs, but it highlights the yawning chasm between the application of organic standards in much of the rest of the world compared to Australia.

Part of the backdrop to this is, it seems, that Australia hasn’t really embraced organic food and farming. But of course without a solid regulatory framework that consumers can trust without question, how will the market ever really get going? The suggestions in a number of pieces we’ve read recently are that there really isn’t much in the way of political will to apply a solution there (Psst, Aussie Government, we have a model you can use…).

Perhaps we should work on marketing to Australia with the message that when our exports say organic, they mean organic. That might kick them into life.

Just a post for the record, really, but in case you haven’t seen it yet, Defra has launched its updated website.

They confess that not all of the information has been hauled right up-to-date yet, but they are working on it. So, for all your Government organic farming-related info you now need to go here.

Not entirely sure about the colour scheme – the phrase ’slightly garish’ springs to mind  and it’s far from clear that the designers consulted a colour wheel, but hey ho, a change is as good as a rest, n’est pas?

Just a brief update to note that downloads of our Guide to Organic Certification: Food Processing stand at exactly 400 at the time of writing. That’s quite a neat milestone, don’t you think?

In addition to that we’ve sent copies of the printed (and satisfyingly heavyweight) version all over the UK and around the world. Did I mention that it’s free in both formats?

If you haven’t seen it yet take a look here…

Interesting debate may be on the cards following the publication by the journal Food Policy (via FoodNavigator.com) of research into whether the public would accept food labelled as being “in-conversion” to organic.

It’s easy to see people coming down firmly on each side of the fence on this issue. We’d be fascinated to hear your comments below.

On one hand an “in-conversion” label would give producers who are on the road to full status the chance to possibly recoup some level of premium price for their efforts. On the other hand, would we risk confusing shoppers if we haven’t yet done a good enough job of explaining the reasons why they should be buying certified organic produce?

So finally details are emerging of the long-promised competition for students to design what will be the new, mandatory, EU-wide organic logo.

You may recall that they had one of these last year – until someone noticed it looked too much like the Aldi trademarked organic logo. Whoops. So, back to the drawing board. Literally.

Technically, whatever the new logo is going to look like, it comes into force from July 2010, so they need to crack on with this. There’s a sparkly new website announcing the competition – although no-one can register yet, which seems like a huge missed opportunity. How many visitors to the site will remember to return later???

Anyway, if you know of a keen art/design/media student who would like to be able to walk around for the next few years saying “I did that” whenever they see packaging with the EU organic logo on, let them know – but only if they’re any good; we’ve all got to live with this!

[UPDATE: Our never-to-be-fobbed-off Development Officer, Steven, contacted those running the competition to find out when people might actually be able to register. The answer was a kind of vague "next week". Great to see the usual levels of efficiency our European contributions are funding. That's all.]

Organic Farmers & Growers is very pleased to be unveiling its new Guide to Organic Certification for food processing.

This has been a long-time in the making as our processor certification team refined and refined it to ensure it was going to be as useful and practical a publication as possible.

The guide spells out all of the stages of gaining organic certification in food processing and should answer most, if not all, of the obvious questions that anyone would have before going into the sector. It would also prove a useful reference for companies that have to regularly train new staff in this field.

It’s definitely a quality product (the printed versions would stand up very nicely to be lugged around production facilities), but is also available as a free download from our website.

As well as describing the stages of the certification process there are examples of all the relevant forms, so applicants can see at-a-glance how to complete them. It really should remove a lot of guesswork.

Congratulations to processor CO’s Ruth and Joanna, Development Officer, Steve, and Office Manager, Angela, for pulling this together.