Organic Food: Labelling

(asked on 6th September 2023) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her Department has made a recent assessment of the adequacy of the level of transparency that food producers have with consumers when using derogations for the use of non-organic agricultural ingredients.


Answered by
Mark Spencer Portrait
Mark Spencer
Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 14th September 2023

A company who prepares, produces, stores, imports, exports or sells organic food in the UK must be certified by an approved UK organic control body.

A product for consumption may only be labelled and marketed as “organic” if it meets the organic production rules, at least 95% of the agricultural ingredients are organically certified, all other ingredients, additives and processing aids are listed as permitted in the organic regulations and the product, labels and suppliers are certified.

The 5% non-organic limit is only for permitted non-organic ingredients listed in the organic regulations or where an ingredient is not available in sufficient quality or quantity.

Derogations for non-organic ingredients which are not listed in the organic regulations are considered based on documentary evidence of non-availability of an ingredient in organic form in sufficient quality or quantity.

Our organic food legislation requires organic and non-organic ingredients to be identified in the ingredients panel on the label of an organic product. The Government is not overly prescriptive about how the organic and non-organic agricultural ingredients of a given product are shown so long as it is obvious to the consumer. An asterisk against all organic or non-organic ingredients is a common method used by UK producers.

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