How Can You Tell If It’s Really Organic?
Friday, September 26th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed
There are a lot of products out there claiming to be natural or organic. Now what do these claims actually mean? If you ask different people, you will get very different definitions for these words.
If you ever studied chemistry at high school you might remember that an ‘organic’ substance is one that has carbon atoms. Now that includes a wide range of ingredients that could be found in an ‘organic’ product, including many undesirable substances.
The other meaning of organic is to do with sustainable agricultural practices. It is an agricultural practices that promotes biodiversity and sustainability without using genetically modified organisims or synthetic fertilizers and herbicides. To make sure that a farm is actually following organic practices there is now independent and government regulated bodies that provide organic certifications.
The International Foundation for Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) is the main international body for the world wide organic movement. It unites 750 members in over 100 countries that together certify tens of millions hectares of agricultural land. A certification by an IFOAM member certifier is the only assurance that a product is actually organic. Anything else has no meaning.
Organic certification originally started for farming intended for human consumption and has grown to a $60 billion a year market and growing rapidly. The industry is also expanding outside of food products.
The personal care and cosmetic industry is also getting onto the organic movement. However this industry has the most deceiving marketing tactics around the word ‘organic’. Usually an ‘organic’ product has a minimal amount of organic ingredients, but the bulk of the product is comprised synthetic chemicals.
The company ONE Group was the very first to have certified at a food level a line of organic skin care products, with their Miessence range, and have since grown to a range of certified hair, body, oral, baby, cosmetic and household products.
There has been a big growth of organic products in this area as very little safety testing around the chemicals that go into cleaning, cosmetic and personal care products. The reason is quite logical, if you wouldn’t eat something, why would you put it on your skin and let it soak in?
A lot of scientific research has been published that proves the dangers of the chemicals we have been exposed to from the chemical products in our houses. The change towards food level certified organic products has just begun but remember when you’re shopping for organic products to look for the certification label.
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