On March 19, 2024, the highly anticipated Strengthening Organic Enforcement (SOE) Rule became effective in the United States. The regulation, published by the USDA, is the most significant change to the National Organic Program (NOP) standards since their original publication 20 years ago. The update’s focus is on maintaining integrity throughout the organic industry and strengthening consumer trust in the Organic label. 

What is The Goal of The New Strengthening Organic Regulation?

The new enforcement aims to reduce the types of uncertified entities in the US Organic supply chain that operate without USDA oversight including importers, certain brokers, and traders of organic products. 

The intention is to strengthen trust in the organic supply chain worldwide. According to the USDA statement, “The organic supply chain had become increasingly complex, reducing transparency in the market and leading to documented cases of organic fraud” This will safeguard organic product integrity and improve traceability to ensure that products labeled organic are made with ingredients that are proven organic. 

Why is this important? For example, a company could have theoretically sourced multiple ingredients labeled organic from countries with lower standards (or even non organic ingredients) to produce finished goods in the US that received a blanket label of Organic. Or, finished-goods makers could source ingredients from non-organic-certified entities in the US to create a finished product labeled as Organic. So the new regulations are more stringent to prevent cases like these. 

What Are The Requirements of The New Regulation?

The most important parts of the New Organic Regulation address 4 key areas per The Agricultural Marketing Service. 

Import Certificates: Required use of National Organic Program Import Certificates for all Organic products entering the United States. 

Container Identification: Containers used to ship and store products must display organic identification with traceability information.

Enhanced Inspections: Certified operations face more rigorous spontaneous inspections.

Uniform Standards: Organic inspectors and Organic-certifying agent personnel must meet uniform qualification and training standards.

Our Commitment to Strengthened Organic Standards

At Best in Nature, quality and consistency is at the heart of what we do. So meeting and exceeding these guidelines were important to us for compliance as well as making sure customers receive products they can trust were made with transparently-sourced ingredients. 

As a result, we are now certified Organic by QAI (Quality Assurance International). The certification represents more to us than just a piece of paper, it represents our commitment to improving our procedures constantly and providing customers with outstanding products. So, next time you see the USDA or QAI organic seal on our products you know you are purchasing a reliable Organic product with traceable roots. 

While we're discussing the Organic Seals, let’s talk about the different ones and what they mean. The seal above belongs to the USDA National Organic Program (NOP) and was established in 2000 to ensure the integrity of organic products and build consumer trust.

So that naturally raises the question for many people, what exactly is an organic product? An organic product is a food or agricultural product that has been produced according to the

USDA organic standards, those standards include the following:  

• Use natural fertilizers
• Use eco-friendly pest control 
• Follow good practices to protect the quality of soil and water. 
• Follow good traceability practices
• No GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms)
• No artificial colors, flavors or preservatives

The seal can only be used by certified businesses that have successfully completed a USDA Organic certification audit and have shown compliance with the NOP Standard. 

Why Is There Another Organic Seal?

This seal belongs to QAI or Quality Assurance International. They’re the third-party certifying body who can document an organization’s compliance with organic standards along an international supply chain in order to be granted the right to use the USDA seal. In that way, these two seals are both related to certifying products as organic where USDA relates to US regulations and QAI can certify to various international standards.