Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Standards-setting and certification for organic personal care products

In several posts (here, here, and here) on The Style Page blog, I've highlighted various activities to set standards and certification rules for what constitutes "natural" or "organic" personal care products (note that "natural" and "organic" are not necessarily synonyms). Vendor participation in these programs is voluntary.

Mischo Beauty posted an article about the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Organic Program, or NOP. According to the USDA,

The National Organic Program (NOP) develops, implements, and administers national production, handling, and labeling standards for organic agricultural products. The NOP also accredits the certifying agents (foreign and domestic) who inspect organic production and handling operations to certify that they meet USDA standards.

In another article, Mischo Beauty highlights another voluntary program to certify products as "biodynamic."

Bottom line: Given the plethora of standards-setting and certification activities, an international voluntary standard that specifies what constitutes organic personal care products should be established through ISO.

5 comments:

beautylogicblog said...

Stylepage, thanks for the info. :-)

The Style Page said...

Dominican enigma,

De nada.

Let's exchange links.

Retainer Girl said...

Good post. Many shoppers don't realize how loose the standards are for cosmetic companies.

Mischo Beauty said...

I just posted a link to your post! Thanks so much for that!

The Style Page said...

Retainer Girl,

You are right. By and large, consumers have to rely on the cosmetic companies to substantiate the safety of their products - visit this link on FDA oversight of cosmetics:
http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/cos-206.html