CERTCOST is a European research project on certification of organic food.
With the ongoing growth of the organic sector and the spread of organic production across the EU, the field of organic certification has become a maze of competing labels and logos, involving different private and public standards - in addition to European law. This diversity reflects the specific conditions for organic operators in countries or regions but can also lead to confusion for both consumers and producers and may ultimately create a variety of costs.
The overall objective of the project is to provide recommendations to improve the organic food certification systems in Europe in terms of efficiency, transparency, and cost effectiveness. The reason for this is the need for a strenthened competiteveness of the European organic food sector by means of reducing incidence of non-compliance and thereby increase consumers' trust.
In other words, the project partners willl generate research based knowledge on how to improve the organic food certification system in terms of efficiency, transparency and cost effectiveness.
The CERTCOST project will conduct a necessary comprehensive economic analysis of the variety of existing certification systems and their impact on the internal market for organic goods. By combining the experience and knowledge of both researchers and small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), the project seeks to fulfil the following objectives
This project is supported by the European Commission under the SEVENTH FRAMEWORK PROGRAMME, Collaborative project, Small or medium-scale focused research project.
