Strengthening Organic Enforcement SOE in March 2024

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) organic regulations define the rules around Certified USDA Organic. Now new amendments are going into effect in order to strengthen oversight and enforcement of the production, handling, and sale of organic agricultural products.

The focus of the amendments are centered around protect integrity in the organic supply chain and building consumer and industry trust in the USDA organic label by strengthening organic control systems, improving farm to market traceability, and providing robust enforcement of the USDA organic regulations.

Topics addressed in this amendment include:

• Applicability of the regulations and exemptions from organic certification;
• National Organic Program Import Certificates;
• Recordkeeping and product traceability;
• Certifying agent personnel qualifications and training;
• Standardized certificates of organic operation;
• Unannounced on-site inspections of certified operations;
• Oversight of certification activities;
• Foreign conformity assessment systems;
• Certification of producer group operations;
• Labeling of non-retail containers;
• Annual update requirements for certified operations;
• Compliance and appeals processes; and
• Calculating organic content of multi-ingredient products

For more information on details of the amended rule, click here.

Some quick facts directly from USDA can be seen here.

Share-ify offers multiple solutions to assist companies with standards compliance and audit preparation. Share-ify’s QFSM solution helps document processes and programs and enables data collection directly from a tablet. Data is then compared to documented plans to provide transparency to management with real time reporting.

In addition, Share-ify helps companies house their information and share it with trading partners. As certificates expire, Share-ify assists companies with updating all appropriate parties with the newest documentation.

To receive a product demonstration, contact [email protected] today.