23 Feb 2015

Cooperation to combat fraud

Bologna, Munich, Zeist 19.02.2015 – at BIOFACH 2015, the world’s leading only organic trade fair, Organic Services and Bionext, and Organic Services and FEDERBIO agreed on a close cooperation.

The common strategy targets greater reliability, quality and integrity of organic food and farming by fighting fraud based on real time certification data connected to the supply chain.

With its member companies from processing and trade, Bionext developed an ‘Organic Risk Assessment Tool’ over the past years. The development first focused on product ‘residue monitoring’ later on a more general ‘risk assessment’ strategy including country of origin specific risks, before now the comprehensive solution of the ‘Organic Risk Assessment Tool’ for use by companies was finalized. As a next step Bionext will present a web-based tool allowing for smarter use and wider acceptance. Together with partner organizations such as AÖL in Germany (Association of organic food processors) Bionext is open to offer this tool for everyone interested, so that on a global scale the integrity of organic products will be improved based on a comparable approach.

FEDERBIO developed in close cooperation with retail, processors and certifiers the ‘FEDERBIO Integrity Platform’. The platform is set-up and ready. The 2015 grain harvest will be the first which will be traded on the platform, monitoring volumes through the complete supply chain from farm to retails, so that fraud is prevented. Grain imported to Italy will be step by step integrated, so that full traceability is achieved. Major retail, e.g. COOP, Conad and the leading organic supermarket chain naturaSi have decided to only trade products verified through the platform. Through the database ‘DATA BIO’, set-up by the Italian accreditation organization Accredia and mandatory for Italian organic certifiers, all farm, acreage and product data necessary for a sound and transparent foundation at single field level is available for FEDERBIO Integrity Platform.

Organic Services launched ‘Check Organic’ at BIOFACH 2014 as a real time database linking certification data from organic certification bodies with production data along the supply chain. By de-coupling the real time prove of certification from sales and the movement of products fraud is efficiently fought! The tool offers great services to processors and trade, as well as to certifiers allowing for online verification of individual supply chains, simple or complex, short or global. The global roll-out is under way with certifiers signing up for delivering of certification data. Once a significant regional respectively global percentage of certified organic operations is included, Check Organic verification will go live.

The cooperation will strengthen the activities of the three organizations by working together and by combining their efforts. All three organizations are dedicated to fighting fraud in organic supply chains, and markets to protect the integrity of products and brands, and to justify the confidence of consumers in organic products.

Contact:
Bavo van den Idsert, Bionext: van.den.idsert@remove-this.bionext.nl
Paolo Carnemolla, FEDERBIO: info@remove-this.federbio.it
Gerald A. Herrmann, Organic Services: g.herrmann@remove-this.organic-services.com, mobile +49 177 5521460
Frank Gerriets, Organic Services: f.gerriets@organic-services.com, mobile +49 163 8691843

Download the press release.
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Bionext promotes the collective interests of the Dutch organic sector, on national and European level. The organisation acts as spokesperson for organic businesses and is the contact for all parties with an interest in organic food and farming.

FEDERBIO is the Italian umbrella organizing 51 members representing the diversity of the organic sector and about 95% of the Italian operators (CBs, consumer, cultural and ecology, retailer, input manufacturer, processor and trader and regional organic farmers’ associations). A wide range of activities guarantees that the voice of organic is heard by the market, consumers, administration and politics.

Organic Services is an international strategy and management consultancy specialized in organic food, sustainability and development matters. With more than 30 years of experience Organic Services is passionate about challenges that matter to the organic sector, and often to the world. Services include market development and related research, strategy development, communication and promotion, business and project development, capacity building, quality management and related IT tools.

 

from left to right: Frank Gerriets, Organic Services; Paolo Carnemolla, FEDERBIO; Ksenia Shershneva, FEDERBIO; Gerald A. Herrmann, Organic Services

from left to right: Frank Gerriets, Organic Services; Paulien Veermann, Bionext; Gerald A. Herrmann, Organic Services; Bavo van den Idsert, Bionext; Will Meister, Organic Services