1. Brief update from the e-Cert user
2. Learning more about e-Cert with a “Guided Tour”
3. Revision of the e-Cert price system
4. e-Cert: Management of deadlines and sanctions
5. SAmCom (Sustainable Agriculture m-Commerce), research
project in Australia
6. e-Cert at the Organic World Congress in Adelaide (Australia)
7. What are you expecting regarding …
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Dear friends and colleagues,
The season in the northern hemisphere is now well advanced and harvest
has already begun. It is also high season for inspection bodies and certifiers,
and on average more than two thirds of all farmers and licensees have
had their annual inspection and are certified. While inspections and certifications
are ongoing, deadlines and sanctions have to be planned and administered,
and spot inspections need to be scheduled.
Some processors are having difficulties with their multi-ingredient products
as certification of some of the ingredients is on hold due to their unclear
status prior to certification. At the same time some certifiers have had
to wait for replies from their overseas colleagues about the certification
of these products. And then there are the certification officers who have
had to respond to queries from their competent authority regarding the
identity of a product lot in which a residue has been detected. All difficult
and frustrating situations except for those who can rely on a transparent,
up to date and actual database system assisting inspectors and certi-fiers
to cope with their daily work.
Read about the progress certifiers have made using e-Cert!
I wish you success,
Gerald A. Herrmann
g.herrmann@ e-cert.net
Mobile: +49 (0)177 552 14 60
Please also look at our homepage www.e-cert.net
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1. Brief update from e-Cert users
e-Cert’s internal quality assurance programme assures the highest
performance possible for every client. In addition, e-Cert’s project
teams are engaged in supporting their clients’ staff in order to
resolve any difficulties arising from the job of achieving the companies’
specific requirements.
bio.inspecta (Switzerland): So far, more than 30.000 active inspection assignments have been handled by e-Cert. Included in this total about 7,000 are producers using up to 20 different label-certification-programmes (including private and governmental programmes like alp-pasture etc.), and 1,500 are processors using up to 15 different label-certification-programmes. About thirty inspectors are already equipped with tablet PCs. All relevant data collected during earlier inspections has now been uploaded on to the tablets and will be avail-able during all future inspections. By the end of July about 4,000 certificates and invoices had already been issued.
Austria Bio Garantie (Austria): So far, 30,000 active inspection assignments, including about 12,000 producers and 600 processors with up to ten label-certification-programmes, had been handled by e-Cert. In addition, around 2,500 certificates and invoices have already been is-sued, and data from about 2,000 producers has been automatically transferred to external traceability systems via the web-interface.
Naturland (Germany): Certification of processors has recently started. The inspections’ re-sults, including sanctions and deadlines, which are handled by e-Cert, are administered by Naturland’s certification officer; certificates are printed out by the system.
International Certification Services, ICS (USA): The time schedule for the project has been fixed and the preparation for the implementation is on its way. After the first three implementations (see above) ICS/FVO stands to benefit from the experience made. Robert Simmons (senior executive partner): “ICS is looking forward to installation of the e-Cert system in our offices this fall. We are happy to hear of the success experienced by the large European companies who have already implemented the system and we are eager to experience that success ourselves."
Coop (Switzerland): Coop uses e-Cert for its internal audit management system, including audits of all suppliers and outlets. e-Cert has recently been customised for Coop to suit their particular needs, and Coop’s project leader has started the first pilot audits. Supplier data as well as product data are automatically transferred from the internal Electronic Resource Plan-ning (ERP) system (an SAP software). Thomas Lorber, project leader of e-Cert and responsible for Coop stated: “It was a positive challenge for us to customise e-Cert for the needs of Coop. Although the audit system is equal the reports are quite different to those of an organic CB. The marketing hierarchy and the relationship between the different outlets has to be made visible in the reports. This is why we had to add an additional level into the reporting tool. Now we are looking forward to getting the first audit reports.”
SwissGap (Switzerland): SwissGap, the Swiss umbrella association of food associations, is in-volved in the implementation of EurepGap in Switzerland and has decided to use e-Cert in a pilot project. Besides the benchmarked EurepGap standard five additional label programmes will be integrated into this project. Three to four inspection bodies and three certification bodies (in total involving about 100 people) are engaged in the pilot project.
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2. Learning more about e-Cert with a “Guided Tour”
The internet is a valuable tool for direct marketing activities. e-Cert
has set up a demo-system, which is accessible via the internet, for guided
tours displaying all the functionalities of e-Cert and showing how you
can make use of them in your company. No matter where you are located
or how much time difference there is between your location and the European
time – we can fix a date and can guide you and your responsible
colleagues through the soft-ware, topic by topic. In conjunction with
the data-conference, a phone-conference to discuss all queries as they
arise completes the technical set-up. If you are interested please contact
us to fix an appointment.
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3. Revision of the e-Cert price system
First the bad news: essentially e-Cert will not become any cheaper. But
– and this is the good news – after BioFach the e-Cert marketing
team assessed the requests of potential clients and developed a more detailed
price system based on the fact that not all modules and functional-ities
are needed by every inspection or certification body. The system now allows
you to better define your choices from the broad range of functionalities
of e-Cert. Please contact us
to get your detailed customised offer.
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4. e-Cert: Management of deadlines and sanctions
e-Cert supports inspection and certification staff in managing sanctions
and deadlines. The precise language for sanctions and deadlines can be
defined for each question in the inspec-tor’s checklist (related
to a standard) and will be proposed when applicable during the work-flow.
Inspectors can choose one of the proposed sanctions and/or deadlines,
and may add a comment.
In the next step of the workflow the certification officer may accept or overrule the action of the inspector. Every change is documented and visible in e-Cert. During any follow-up proce-dures staff, therefore, have a quick and easy overview of which sanctions and deadlines are due to be fulfilled by which client so that they can be considered within the work schedule. Intelligent filter and search engines make it easy to manage the different topics, for example, sending reminders or planning on-site visits.
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5. SAmCom (Sustainable Agriculture m-Commerce), research
project in Australia
With burgeoning sales and the growing globalisation of the markets it
is becoming increasingly challenging to guarantee the traceability of
the organic system: to ensure the producer of a product can easily be
identified. The University of South Australia (Adelaide), in co-operation
with NAASA, the leading Australian certification body, and an Australian
telecommunication provider, mNet Corporation, has set up a research programme
called “Extending the Integrated Grocery Supply Chain: linking Australian
primary producers via m-Commerce”. The project will investigate
the feasibility of using mobile phones to capture and transmit information
along the food supply chain from primary producers to the next step in
the supply chain up to supermar-kets, restaurants, or export partners.
Because the organic market is very advanced in its un-derstanding of quality
management, the programme managers, Ms Paula M.C. Swatman and Mr Nhiem
Lu, chose it for their pilot project. After a first meeting between Mr.
Nhiem Lu and e-Cert representative Frank Gerriets they agreed upon a close
cooperation. Frank Gerriets stated: “It is good to see that the
research team of the University of South Australia under-stands that the
primary production plays the most important role in regard to product
quality. This understanding of quality and that of farmers and the grocery
industry is very close to our own experience.”
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6. e-Cert at the “IFOAM Organic World Congress” 20-23
September 2005, Adelaide
e-Cert will be present at the “IFOAM Organic World Congress”. Gerald A. Herrmann will give a presentation on “Traceability of organic products - standards and regulations, challenges, ex-amples”. Traceability, a topic that is already important within the organic market, but has become even more so by new regulations introduced. New legal and private standards on traceability of goods have been set up (EU 178/2002, IFS, BRS, EurepGAP etc.), and it is be-coming more and more difficult – also for organic companies – to fulfil all detailed require-ments. e-Cert provides data that is integrated into traceability systems through sophisticated web interfaces which are necessary to exchange huge amount of data. Every single data (ani-mal or field) is transferred with its certification status to the traceability system.
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7. Please indicate your interest …
Please choose a statement from the box below, and send an email addressed
to g.herrmann@ e-cert.net or fax to +49 89 820 759 19. Thank you very
much!
I want to learn more about the functionalities and the possibilities
of cost saving with e-Cert
I want to learn more about e-Cert and its interface to traceability systems
I am interested in a guided tour
I am interested in visiting one of the certifiers using e-Cert to see
the program in real time
I am interested in a personal presentation and evaluation of our software
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“e-Cert News” is published by Organic Services. Gerald A. Herrmann, Director of Organic Ser-vices is responsible for international business development of e-Cert. We welcome comments.
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