As a small business, we strive to ensure that we are acting responsibly and ethically not only in the production but also the marketing of our products.
As such, it becomes frustrating for us to see terms thrown around by other small business soap manufacturers that we can tell are just not accurate. Specifically the term Organic.
While we know what to expect (maybe) with our organic foods, there is little regulation enforcement in the beauty care industry.
Remember, just using organic supplies DOES NOT make an organic soap. Please remember to ask questions of anyone making such claims with your beauty products.
Here is a great article about it from last September.. It is a lot to read, so I highlighted the specific parts for you to remember..
ENJOY!!
Certification, Accreditation, and Compliance Committee
USDA National Organic Standards Board
Recommendation
August 30, 2009
Solving the Problem of Mislabeled Organic Personal Care Products Purpose
The Certification, Accreditation, and Compliance Committee (CACC) recommends that organic personal care products be recognized explicitly by the National Organic Program (NOP) to ensure consumers and businesses alike that the products have an unquestioned home in the USDA National Organic Program.
Background
The policy statement of the USDA on August 23, 2005 extended the USDA regulations to cover the organic claims made by personal care products which meet the composition requirements for organic food. With this recognition has come the full force of certification and enforcement. While this is an improvement over what previously existed, an ever-increasing stream of personal care products making organic claims continues to flow in to the market place. In an April 2008 news bulletin, the NOP further explained USDA organic certification of cosmetics, body care products, and personal care products.
Most recently, in July 2009, the NOP published a DRAFT FOR COMMENT ONLY: Certification and Labeling of Soap Products Made From Agricultural Ingredients. The Appendix contains these 3 NOP statements. None of these statements were developed through the Federal Rulemaking process, neither is it certain how durable these various statements will be at NOP.
Cosmetics, Body Care Products, and Personal Care Products
The Problem of Mislabeled Personal Care Products
The USDA is responsible for product organic claims but is not currently enforcing this in the area of personal care products. Consumers are not assured that organic claims are consistently reviewed and applied to the class of products known as personal care products. For instance, at a given retailer, one may find personal care products such as shampoos and lotions labeled as ?organic? with no clear standards or regulatory underpinning for the organic claim--and unless the product is specifically labeled as ?USDA Organic,? the word ?organic? may be used with impunity. Manufacturers of personal care products that contain organic ingredients are hindered by a thicket of competing private standards and confusion regarding the applicability of the NOP to their products. Transactions lack the regulatory clarity that applies under the NOP to food products that contain organic ingredients.
Given the pace of development of this marketplace, and the important but uneven development of private standards, the NOP should take the necessary initial steps to bring this product class into a coordinated existence with organic food products under the regulation.
This recommendation takes the initial steps toward:
1) assuring consumers that the federal government is policing organic claims on personal care products
2) allowing for the development of a complete federal organic personal care product program
Recommendation
To facilitate the development of a single national standard for this product class, and to ensure consumers that organic personal care products meet a consistent standard, the CACC recommends that the following amendments be made to
7 CFR Part 205. Underlined text is to be added to the current rule.