OCIA International opens regional office in Europe

The Organic Crop Improvement Association (OCIA) is a non-profit, member-owned, organic certification organization committed to providing its members with the highest quality organic certification services. It also grants them access to the global organic marketplace and provides certification services to thousands of organic farmers, processors and handlers from more than 20 countries in America, Europe, Africa and Asia.

"OCIA is one of the most important organic certifiers in the world and is committed to improve the service for their associates even more," according to a press information of OCIA. Therefore, a new regional office in Europe has recently been opened in Seville/Andalusia, aiming at offering certification services locally and internationally. The Association started its business by certifying seaweed in Ireland as their first NOP certification in Europe. Mr. Edgardo Koestinger, the director of the regional office, will have international inspector training to train OCIA inspectors shortly.

OCIA is accredited by IFOAM, by the USDA (ISO Guide 65) and by the Costa Rica Ministry of Agriculture (MAG), and offers NOP, JAS and CAAQ (Conseil del Appelations Agroalimentaires du Quebec) certifications and has EU 2092/91 verifications as well as Bio-Suisse compliance. At the moment, the new European OCIA regional office is working to promote mostly NOP certifications to organic operators in Europe. OCIA will be present at BioFach 2007 in hall 2, stand 134.

www.ocia.org