Org. Certification for Cosmetic Ingredients: Be Careful

Be CAREFUL with
your ingredient certifications…

There are 2 types of certifications for org. ingredients that we use in
cosmetics:

– PUBLIC: these are regulations enforceable under law and

– PRIVATE: these are standards owned by organizations that are not part
of a government.

Examples of PUBLIC STANDARDS are certificates that show that a product
is certifed to the USDA-NOP Regulation, 7 CFR Part 205 or the EU Directive
EC-Regulation No. 834/2007 and 9889/2008 and COR – the Canadian Standard. If
these numbers and/or standard descriptions do not appear on the certificate,
the product is not considered oganic in the U.S.

Examples of Private certificates are NSF, NaTrue, EcoCert Greenlife,
Cosmos, Soil Association Organic Cosmetis Standard. These standards are used in
the EU to certify both cosmetic ingredients and finished products.

INGREDIENTS CERTIFIED TO ANY OF THE PRIVATE STANDARDS ARE NOT RECOGNIZED
AS “ORGANIC” BY THE NOP AND MAY NOT BE CALLED ORGANIC ON LABELS SOLD IN THE
U.S.

I know this is a royal pain and we need to find a way to fix it – but if
you are a national brand (or want to be a national brand), you really need to
understand the regulation differences. Unfortunately, there are many
distributors who are new to organic and they don’t really know about these
differences. Don’t formulate anything in until you have seen the certificate
with your own eyes and you know which standard it meets and if that standard is
accepted by your certifier.

Happy New Year!