Abstract
Unannounced audits are a verification mechanism that may improve the effectiveness and quality of certification programs. In this context, the question arises of whether unannounced audits are really effective, and if so, to what extent. To address this, a data set provided by the German Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE) containing information reported by 23 certification bodies (CBs) was analysed. The analysis was constrained by the complicated and limited reporting system implemented by the German Regional and National Competent Authorities. This suggests that the structure of official reports should be revised and improved. In any case, the relatively low number of sanctions per operator detected in this study suggests that either the majority of operators are in line with the major requirements of the EU legislation on organic farming or that the CBs do not detect all non-compliances. Further research using more disaggregated data is needed to provide more evidence about the impact of unannounced audits on the reliability of the organic certification system.
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Notes
Certification is defined as “the (voluntary) assessment and approval by an (accredited) party on an (accredited) standard” (Meuwissen et al. 2003). Similarly, according to Giannakas (2002) certification is “a process through which unobservable product characteristics (such as the process through which they have been produced) are ‘guaranteed’ to consumers through a label. To avoid conflicts of interest, the guarantee is usually issued by a third (private or public) independent party whose ability to verify producer claims is greater than that of an individual”.
Non-compliance means any act against the feed or food law and against the rules for the protection of animal health and welfare (European Union 2004, Article 2(10)).
Sanctions on product lots are applied in case of detected irregularities. When an irregularity is found the indications referring to the organic production method are removed from the entire lot or production run affected by the irregularity concerned (European Union 2007, Article 30(1)).
Sanctions on operators are applied in case of detected severe infringements or an infringement with prolonged effect. When an infringement is found, the operator is prohibited from marketing products with indications referring to the organic production method for a certain period (European Union 2007, Article 30(1)).
Including sanctions on a lot and on the operator.
Giving that it is not possible to distinguish CBs in the anonymous data set, comparisons across years are not possible.
The risk analysis takes into consideration factors such as results of previous inspections, quantity of products and the risk of product contamination as a result of parallel organic and non-organic productions (European Union 2008a).
Because of the length of the analysis, we omitted the presentation of these results here. However, a set of tables showing the comparison analysis is available upon request.
Lighter sanctions were not available in the provided data set.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the German Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (Bundesanstalt für Landwirtschaft und Ernährung (BLE)) for providing the data set to carry out this research. The authors would like also to thank the two anonymous referees as well as the Editor for the useful suggestions and comments, which helped to improve the scientific quality of this manuscript.
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Padilla Bravo, C., Villanueva Ramírez, I., Neuendorff, J. et al. Assessing the impact of unannounced audits on the effectiveness and reliability of organic certification. Org. Agr. 3, 95–109 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13165-013-0048-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13165-013-0048-9