Processing Certification
What are the SOPA Processing standards?
SOPA's Organic Food Processing Certification Scheme is relatively straightforward: you check that your recipe or specification agrees with the standards; check what you buy as organic definitely is organic; keep these ingredients from becoming contaminated by cleaning materials or other products; label the item you are selling correctly.
The Defra Organic standards ask that any recipes have all organic agricultural ingredients, with processing aids and non-agricultural ingredients from the permitted lists in the standards. There are a few agricultural ingredients that are permitted as non-organic, but only where you can prove that they are not available in organic form.
Processing should do the minimum to the ingredients to produce the product.
There are two levels of food processing that can be registered with SOPA.
1. Simple/Intermediate processing: Where the nature, weight or volume of the product is not changed.
- Cleaning, peeling or chopping,
- Box schemes,
- Blending e.g. Muesli,
- Processing of single organic product e.g. flour milling
- Simple butchery
- Warehousing, transport or distribution
2. Complex processing: Where the nature, weight or volume is changed
- Cooking involving weight loss (frying, baking, boiling)
- Dehydration, rehydration, evaporation
- Emulsification
- Fermentation (wine making or brewing, yoghurt, cheese or bread making)
The SOPA Food Processing Organic Standards also covers animal feed compounding, importing of organic produce, abattoirs and the United States National Organic Programme (NOP).
If you are interested in the SOPA Processing Standards or have any enquiries about becoming a certified organic processor please contact the SOPA office on Tel: 0131 335 6606
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