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