Certification of public organic procurement in Denmark, Italy, Finland and Norway as compared to Germany

Abstract

In the iPOPY project (innovative Public Organic food Procurement for Youth), one of the tasks was to map the challenges linked to the supply chains of organic food, and to which extent the participating countries have developed any form of certification of out-of-home food serving. For primary production and processing, regulations have been developed on the EU level. Norway, as a member of the EEA, is obliged to follow these EU regulations. However, the EU regulations on organic agriculture do not comprise catering, restaurants and other out-of-home food service. Hence, various countries have developed different systems to certify e.g. restaurants wanting to market their organic menus. This report describes the systems in Denmark, Finland, Italy, Norway and Germany. Germany has been used as a reference, since this country is especially familiar to the first author of the report, Dr. Carola Strassner, due to former work and analyses. The report is based on information acquired from certification bodies and experts in each country by questionnaires communicated via e-mail, and subsequent telephone interviews.