We finally have the official, ready-to-use version of the new EU organic logo!
The EU organic logo
We’ve been waiting a while and many of our licensees have been on tenterhooks for this, because for new products it needs to be in use by July and that doesn’t leave a lot of lead time.
This morning the EU website has been updated with downloadable versions of the logo and a style guide for its use and you can grab everything you need from here: http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/organic/eu-policy/logo_en
We were promised we’d have this by the end of this month so, by a hair’s breadth, they have delivered!
It’s still going to mean something of a rush for some operators to get labels designed, approved, printed, distributed, etc. But at least now they can move forward.
Our processing team are currently digesting the detail of the usage guidelines so that they can help with any queries that arise. There are bound to be some.
We also learn today that our identifier code (originally ‘Organic Certification UK2′, then ‘GB Organic Certification 2′) has now been changed again to ‘GB-ORG-02′. Just like that. No more, no less. New logos will be produced shortly for licensee use to update their own materials.
It’s been a long road, but we’re getting there!
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…
organic certification, organic food
