First: When listening to Miles McEvoy during a fishbowl discussion at the IFOAM Organic World Congress in November 2017 in Delhi, he further detailed his position:
“The organic movement has developed a global control system to protect the integrity of organic products. The organic control system is comprehensive and ensures compliance with organic standards from farm to market, for short and long supply chains.
Fraud occurs in the organic market (as it does in other commodities) and the global control system is working well to identify fraud and reduce it in the marketplace. Improvements to the control system are being developed including many initiatives to provide more transparency and information about legitimate organic products. Improving data systems and data quality are key components. Ensuring a reliable, up-to-date list of certified organic operations including which schemes they are certified to, which products they produce/handle, how many acres they have in production, is critical to continuous improvements. Other information system efforts including block-chain technology to track organic products are also critical to support.”
Second: Gerald A. Herrmann held a workshop titled "Let's talk about integrity software for grower groups and small, local certifiers". With ‘Group Integrity’ Organic Services offers an affordable tool for the administration of Internal Controls in smallholder groups and companies with contract production. Group Integrity mirrors Ecert Basic the tool for certifiers to take smallholders to the same level in inspection, certification, data management and follow-up of non-conformities and not to forget the documentation of transactions.
5
Sep
2017