Certifying Out of Home Operators in Europe. European Forum for Certification. Summary of a Forum held at the BioFach Congress 2009

As in previous years the annual meeting on organic certification in the out-of-home sector took place at the congress of the BioFach Trade Fair, on the 22nd of February 2009. As a conclusion to this meeting this report now summarizes the main topics of the “European Forum for Certification” with the focus on the presentations in Nuremberg. The presenters delivered insight into the various situations in their countries and indicated the challenges that they currently are dealing with. Depictions included developments in Belgium, Finland, Italy, Germany, Norway, Switzerland and The Netherlands. After describing and discussing the issues the country presenters agreed to have this paper developed by the organisers, which gives a short overview of the proceedings to all participants and to all interested in this topic. The Council Regulation (EC) No 834/2007 on organic production and labelling of organic products came into force on January 1, 2009. It repeals the former Regulation (EEC) No 2092/91 and for the first time explicitly refers to mass catering (out of home). The Regulation excludes catering and eating enterprises from mandatory certification whilst at the same time giving each country the option how best to proceed. How do member countries deal with this new situation? The presenters go into detail and this summary characterizes some detailed situations in the following pages

Organic Certification of Hotels, Restaurants and Catering in Germany

iPOPY ist ein Forschungsprojekt des CORE Organic I Programms, das untersucht, wie die Integration von Biolebensmitteln in der Verpflegung von Kindern und Jugendlichen mittels entsprechender Strategien und Instrumente erhöht werden kann. Ein Teil des Systems dem speziellen Fokus gegeben wird, ist der der Bio-Zertifizierung. Deutschland dient als Fallbeispiel und wird mit den iPOPY Ländern Dänemark, Finnland, Italien und Norwegen verglichen. Um zu untersuchen, wie iPOPY Länder mit Hotels, Restaurants und Cateringunternehmen verfahren, die angeben, Bio-Produkte im Verpflegungsangebot anzubieten, werden Öko-Kontrollstellen interviewt. Da Deutschland diesen Bereich deutlich geregelt hat, analysiert eine erste Studie den gegenwärtigen Status Quo unter allen deutschen Kontrollstellen. Ein Fragebogen wurden entwickelt, um Anzahl und Größe der zertifizierten Außer-Haus-Betriebe in Erfahrung zu bringen. Mit allen 23 Öko-Kontrollstellen wurden Telefoninterviews geführt. Die Erhebung wurde von Januar bis März 2009 durchgeführt. DieTeilnahme war freiwillig. Die größten Segmente des Außer-Haus-Marktes, die ein Bio-Zertifiziert haben, sind Restaurants, Gemeinschaftsverpflegungsbetriebe und Hotels. Die meist genannte Beschriftung des Angebots ist eine Bio-Linie, gefolgt von Bio-Komponenten, Bio-Zutaten (-Rohstoffe) und eine Kombinationen von diesen Nennungen. In den kommenden Monaten wird dieser Überblick in Dänemark, Finnland, Italien und Norwegen ebenfalls durchgeführt

School food supply in Lower Saxony - Analysis of the current situation

For some years now the number of all-day schools providing school meals in the federal state of Lower Saxony, Germany, has increased continuously. This paper aims at analysing the political determinants and the organization of the provision of school meals in Lower Saxony with a special focus on the provision of organic food and sustainability. As to methods, literature was researched and internet sources were evaluated. In addition, interviews with experts in the field contributed to the findings. The results show heterogeneous approaches to and different forms of the organization of school meal supply. School boards, as the chief agents of provision, seem to enjoy a high degree of organizational freedom. Due to small budgets, time constraints and lack of experience, the quality of the meals provided may suffer and the range of organic products may be affected. It often results in pragmatic solutions dictated by cost saving. With respect to the invitation to tenders, existing quality standards have not been made legally binding for commercial food suppliers to date. Neither is the quality of school meals of particular significance for school inspections. Stakeholders of school meal provision receive support from the Consumer Council of Lower Saxony (Verbraucherzentrale Niedersachsen) and the Coordination Centre for School Food of Lower Saxony (Vernetzungsstelle Schulverpflegung Niedersachsen). The latter opened in spring 2009. A series of workshops within the public campaign "Anyone can go organic" (Bio kann jeder) run by the Hanover Centre of Environment (Umweltzentrum Hannover) provides advice and/or initial training to schools and school boards concerning the use of organic food

Organic Certification in the iPOPY Countries and Germany – Current Status and Future Challenges

The paper is part of the proceedings of an iPOPY seminar. Organic production has to be certified and labeled along the supply chain in order to maintain trust in organic premium products. Since January 1st 2009, organic certification in Europe is subject to the new Council Regulation (EC) No 834/2007 of 28 June 2007. This regulation specifically excludes so-called mass catering operations. It is up to EU member states to apply national rules or private standards insofar as these comply with community law. The paper presents the state of the art and upcoming changes of organic certification of out-of-home catering in Germany with regard to Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Italy

Is there any certification of public organic procurement in iPOPY countries?

On 24 June 1991, the Council of the European Union adopted Regulation (EEC) No 2092/91 on organic production of agricultural products and indications referring thereto on agricultural products and foodstuffs. As well as defining the required method of production of crops and livestock they also regulate labelling, processing, marketing, import and inspection. The research project iPOPY compares and analyses procedures for certification of food-serving outlets within its participating countries (Norway, Denmark, Finland and Italy) using Germany as a reference. While Denmark chooses government agencies to carry out the inspection and certification, Italy, Finland, Norway and Germany choose a state-supervised private system. With the exception of Italy all have a national organic label. Currently only Germany has publicly adopted a standard organic certification programme for the out of home sector. Of the countries analysed, Norway has the most similar system, whereas Denmark and Finland offer operators defined categories of organic use. Though Italy leads in organic use in schools there appears to be no national or other verification system in operation

New models for school meals. School food provision systems in Germany

Several European countries have public goals for increased organic production and consumption. The CORE-organic project iPOPY combines studies of drivers and constraints for public organic food procurement with studies of best practice cases. Four work packages study policies for increased organic consumption, supply chain management and certification issues, consumers’ preferences, and actual health-related eating habits. This presentation covers School Food Provision Systems in Germany

The certification of organic canteens all around Europe

This presentation gives an overview of the legal framework in Europe concerning organic certification of out-of-home operations such as canteens. It contrasts the three ways Member States deal with the situation, namely national law, national recommendations, private standards in the iPOPY countries (Denmark, Italy, Finland, Norway and Germany)

School food provision in Germany. A first analysis of the role of organic produce

School meal provision in Germany is changing from a type of supplementary food provision towards full warm school meals. Reasons for this transition are longer school days, the expansion of the all-day school model, and an increasing interest in a healthy nutrition for children and young people. However, the organisation of school meal systems is patchy and confusing; there is an enormous range of services in various qualities. This paper describes the current situation and explores chances for sustainable school meal systems emerging out of this change. The focus is on the use of organic food in school meals

Certification of organic mass catering - a need for harmonization across Europe?

To evaluate the state of the art of organic certification in out-of-home catering, a survey was carried out among relevant stakeholders in several European countries. The Council Regulation (EC) No 834/2007 about organic production specifically excludes what is called mass catering. Hence, a range of diverging systems for certification of organic catering and restaurants have been developed. This study presents opinions about a potential EU-wide harmonisation of an organic certification scheme for mass catering from relevant stakeholders. Certification bodies and other public authorities as well as stakeholders close to the catering practice were generally positive towards the idea of a harmonisation process. Several stakeholders should be involved in such a process, and organic associations and certification bodies were considered likely to be the strongest drivers. The study demonstrates that even the experts are sometimes unsure about details in this part of organic certification. This illustrates the complexity of this field

Certification of public organic procurement in Denmark, Finland, Italy and Norway as compared to Germany

In the iPOPY project (innovative Public Organic food Procurement for Youth), one of the tasks was to map the challenges linked to the supply chains of organic food, and to which extent the participating countries have developed any form of certification of out-of-home food serving. For primary production and processing, regulations have been developed on the EU level. Norway, as a member of the EEA, is obliged to follow these EU regulations. However, the EU regulations on organic agriculture do not comprise catering, restaurants and other out-of-home food service. Hence, various countries have developed different systems to certify e.g. restaurants wanting to market their organic menus. This report describes the systems in Denmark, Finland, Italy, Norway and Germany. Germany has been used as a reference, since this country is especially familiar to the first author of the report, Dr. Carola Strassner, due to former work and analyses. The report is based on information acquired from certification bodies and experts in each country by questionnaires communicated via e-mail, and subsequent telephone interviews. There is a great variation between the countries with respect to certification of (public) food serving. Denmark has a voluntarily system with a bronze, silver and gold medal assigned to increasing levels of organic food. Finland has no mandatory certification of public organic food serving, but a well developed voluntarily system with five levels assigning increasing shares of organic food. The system includes advice and a certificate to be used in marketing. In Italy, certification is not mandatory, but activities are going on to establish a voluntarily or mandatory system. In Norway and Germany, certification of public organic food serving is mandatory. The Italian experts interviewed welcomed future common standards in this field, whereas the other countries with better established systems did not see any need for change. With respect to school food service, certification of the organic food will imply some additional work. However, a certification will contribute to increase people‘s trust in the food service, and also inform the users and thereby communicate the efforts to increase the consumption of organic food