Organics and Why We are Blogging About It...

Here at the RealFoodSource we take our organic certification very seriously.  We are certified by the Organic Food Federation which ensures we adhere to stringent organic requirements and are subject to annual organic inspections and audits.  Our customers can therefore be certain we are selling genuine certified organic RealFoodSource foods.

There is currently talk in the media about organics fraud and it is something we have been concerned about for a long time.  Monday night's TV program Shop Secrets: Tricks of the Trade on Channel 4 (14th April 2014) on selling cheap supermarket veg on a market stall as "organic" is just the tip of the iceberg. Organic Fraud is on the rise especially in online marketplaces that don't have organic food fraud policies.  Companies make false organic claims and even display organic logos in these marketplaces when they don't have the legally required organic certification. This is fraud! There are pages and pages of food products labelled as organic that are absolutely not. Tag your product as "organic" and it will sell, but is it really organic? It is clear there is millions of pounds of organics fraud happening on eBay alone. It is also clear there is little enforcement of the regulations which is allowing the fraudsters to make enormous profits for years unchallenged.

Not only does this make it difficult for certified organic companies like ourselves to compete fairly, it's also morally wrong and something we feel marketplaces have a duty to their customers to do something about. The authorities also need to take organics fraud more seriously and act quickly where there is a clear case of fraud. With enough of your support perhaps we can get the major online marketplaces to put in place an organic fraud policy and remove the fraudulent listings, and get the authorities to clamp down on the organic fraudsters.

So we thought it was a good time to publish a series of blog posts for our customers, and any other concerned consumers, that gives guidance on organics and advise how to distinguish the fraudsters from the genuine certified organic companies. We also plan to discuss the current state of organics from a business perspective and suggest how we believe things could be improved.  To start with we're going to talk about how you can verify a product is genuinely certified organic here.