Why it is in news?

• From July, it would be illegal to sell organic food that was not appropriately labelled so.
• The Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) had issued regulations that required food companies selling organic produce to get certified with one of the two authorities — National Programme for Organic Production (NPOP) or the Participatory Guarantee System for India (PGS-India).

What are the rules?

• Companies could also get a voluntary logo from the FSSAI that marked its produce as ‘organic.’
• Labelling on the package of organic food shall convey full and accurate information on the organic status of the product.
• Such product may carry a certification or quality assurance mark of one of the systems mentioned
• In addition to the Food Safety and Standard Authority of India’s organic logo
• These rules were finalised after almost a year of being sent out as a draft for public comments.

Third party certification

• For nearly two decades now, organic farming certification had been done through a process of third party certification under the NPOP.
• Nearly 24 agencies were authorised by the NPOP to verify farms, storages and processing units and successful ones got a special ‘India Organic’ logo.
• The PGS-India programme, in contrast, had been around for only two years and — unlike the top-down approach of the NPOP — involves a peer-review approach.
• Here, farmers played a role in certifying whether the farms in their vicinity adhered to organic-cultivation practices.
• This programme was implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture through the National Centre of Organic Farming.

THE HINDU