Organic Certification
CSI offers organic certification services to clients interested in certification under the Canada Organic Regime and all applicable equivalency arrangements such as the NOP, EU, JAS, etc. The revenue to operate our organic program comes from fees we collect for our organic services. A complete listing of our organic program fees can be found in Section 5 of our Organic Certification Policy Manual.
For a general overview of the CSI organic certification process, click on this link to see a flowchart describing the steps to certification.
Canada Organic Regime (COR) - With NOP and EU Equivalency
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s (CFIA) organic program is part of the Safe Food for Canadians Regulation (SFCR). Organic products are regulated under Part 13. The SFCR references the Canada Organic Standards (COS), which are organized as follows:
- Organic Production Systems General Principles and Management Standards (CAN/CGSB-32.310-2020) - provides a detailed description of the practices that are acceptable in organic agricultural production and processing systems.
- Organic Production Systems Permitted Substances Lists (PSL) (CAN/CGSB-32.311-2020) - provides lists of the substances that are permitted for use in the Canada Organic Regime.
- Organic production systems — Aquaculture — General principles, management standards and permitted substances lists (CAN/CGSB-32.312) - provides the production standards and permitted substances lists for organic aquaculture production.
CSI is an organic Certification Body accredited by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. For more information on the Canada Organic Regime, click here.
Equivalency Arrangements
CFIA has negotiated several equivalency arrangements with various trading partners, including the NOP, the EU and Japan. Each equivalency arrangement is unique and has different requirements with regards to the import and export of organic products, and the use of the conformity mark belonging to each scheme. Each of the equivalency arrangements are described here:
Please contact CSI if you have any questions on whether you need to include equivalency under one of the arrangements in your application, and what that means.