Newsletter April 2013

The questionnaire for the expert- interviews is completed. With this questionnaire around 250 experts from the organic sector and from several European member states will be interviewed about needed key training elements for risk orientated organic inspections. In Italy and Austria the interviews started already, in Poland and Germany the interviews will start shortly.

Additionally selected stakeholders from other EU-member states and a candidate country (Turkey) will be interviewed.

From these expert- interviews we expect to get a broad overview about the expectations what organic inspectors need to know and need to apply when conduction risk orientated inspections. We also expect to identify further needs for trainings. The chosen experts are from three stakeholder groups: in the first group experts who are customers of organic certification like representatives of organic farmers, processors, traders and importers and their representative associations are combined. The second group represents the control sector experts from organic control bodies, competent authorities and accreditation bodies. The third group is composed of experts of the “user” side of organic inspections, those working in consumer protection, animal welfare, environmental protection and research.

Dr. S. Bruckner from AGRIZERT Zertifizierungs GmbH is compiling a description of the content and methodology of courses for inspectors in private food and feed certification programs nd in public food and feed control in Austria, Italy, Germany and Poland. The main focus in this research is on the qualification an inspector needs to be allowed to audit each standard, the training-methodology, the training frequency and the content of the trainings. This work package will be finished at the beginning of May.

With the evaluation of the expert interviews we will start a Europe wide online survey for organic inspectors on risk orientated organic inspections and fraud prevention.