The Fair Trade Movement calls for transparent, evidence-based criteria in EU's high-risk organic products list from non-EU countries
The Fair Trade Movement, representing over 830 Fairtrade organic producer groups worldwide - comprising nearly 800,000 smallholder families and more than 50,000 worker families - welcomes the opportunity to comment on the draft Commission Implementing Regulation establishing a list of high-risk organic and in-conversion products originating from third countries and their control rates (PLAN/2024/1522), adopted pursuant to Article 8 of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/1698.
Overall, Regulation 2021/1698 should include criteria for algorithms in how to identify the high-risk products in order to transparency towards the third countries involved. As well as using only substantiated, agree criteria for classifying high-risk products from Third countries; avoiding the use of unproven residue cases.
The Regulation and the annual published lists should also be explicit about what type of “risk” is being addressed, for transparency reasons. At this stage, it is assumed that this refers solely to the risk of application of non-compliant pesticides or other unauthorised substances, but this should be confirmed and stated explicitly in the text.
Read our full contribution here.
Get in touch:
For more information about our work on the EU Organic Regulation, please contact Virginia Enssle, at enssle@fairtrade-advocacy.org.
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