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
