Working towards Organic Certification

Paperwork….paperwork and just a bit more paperwork. That’s all that there seems to be some days. I contacted the people at QAI about a year ago, and they sent all the paperwork for Botanical Earth to get started in having a finished product certified organic. I completely believe I have to put my money where my mouth is and do this. It’s not easy at roughly $2900 per product, yes that is 2 thousand 9 hundred dollar per recipe – any change, and it’s another $1900. So needless to say, I’ll be starting out slowly with only one product at a time.

The biggest delay in starting the certification process is actually having some of our suppliers (previous suppliers I should say) to show documentation of the ingredients being certified organic. A lot of people say their ingredients are organic, but few say “certified” and even less will document with batch numbers that the ingredient is really organic. I was told by one supplier that “Hey, if it’s on the web site that should be good enough for you.” Well, it’s not good enough for certification. I need to prove to QAI that we make products with documented certified organic ingredients, I have to purchase in some really, really big quantities. Quantities like 2500 lbs of coconut oil at a time, so that’s more money …… Is it any wonder only big companies have the certified organic seal on their products?

Well, I will have one product at least by 2007 – that’s my goal and I am sticking to it. Colin has already drawn up the site map for the inspectors to check the shop and to show that our organic ingredients are separate from our non-certified ingredients, and I am writing the protocol for making products to show how we ensure that only organic ingredients are used and not mixed with non-organics when handcrafting our products. A wee bit time consuming, but worth it in the long run.

And then that is just for US certification. For the EU and Japan, it is another application. The product, recipe and ingredient listing is sent to each country for a chemist to review. So I guess I will be in paperwork dreamland for a long time to come…….oh goody.