Check Organic is an international data platform that helps to reveal food fraud at its very source and thereby protects the reputation of your country and of its organic products. The platform goes beyond easily falsifiable, paper-based organic certificates by mapping product transaction data and linking it with certification data in real-time. Based on the certified organic acreage, expected yield and actual product transactions, the system calculates a mass balance and checks the plausibility of produced and processed vs. sold organic quantities. It displays every supply chain party's operator and product integrity status via an intuitive traffic light system and warns you right away of detected irregularities. The tool further allows you to stay abreast of and react flexibly to international regulatory changes.
The tool can serve as a reliable traceability system for your organic agricultural sector and helps you to oversee your certification bodies' performance. This enables you to unveil weaknesses within supply chains before fraud scandals are taken up by the press. Check Organic provides you insight into complex supply chain structures whilst checking automatically if the traded organic volumes match the corresponding production capacities, including pre-processed products, e.g. oil, powder, pulp. Displaying transparency and determination to unveil fraudulent behaviour through Check Organic helps you to create trust and credibility.
All data within Check Organic is logically structured and centralised, allowing for quick and sound data analysis and providing meaningful statistics, e.g. about import and export transactions or certified organic acreage, crops, livestock, and products. All sensitive data is protected, and each user only has access to the data that are subject to their respective area of responsibility. The digitised data is safely stored with an ISO-certified Austrian hosting provider, reducing data loss whilst respecting data privacy rights of all participants.
In order to work with Check Organic, Eva gets on her computer and logs into the Web Portal with her username and password. Here she gets access to the information that is relevant for her department.
Eva operates within the regulatory framework based on the organic law of her country. This framework defines which certification and/ or operator data she can monitor and access. Check Organic supports her in her work as competent authority.
Eva can upload additional documents, such as notes, reports, analyses, satellite data, and photos to a certified operation in Check Organic. This information adds to a sound basis for her integrity assessment.
Eva always has a good integrity overview because she can monitor the supply chain relationships of national organic actors in Check Organic. All actors are displayed with their integrity status (one traffic light for the certification check, one for the mass balance check). Information is either shown on a clear dashboard, visualised in a simple graph, or even localised on a world map.
Eva wants to protect consumers in her country and abroad from fraud. With Check Organic’s mass balancing approach, she can survey the integrity of products. This ensures that only certified organic products can be traded and labelled as organic. Each product transaction has a unique number for its identification and allows to issue a transaction certificate for the traded quantity. Hence, the reputation of exported products and trust in her country’s organic system is safeguarded.
Based on the verified certification status of the supply chain actors, Check Organic displays a corresponding traffic light. Thanks to that, Eva can gain a quick integrity insight on both certification and mass balance level. If all traffic lights are green, Eva can relax. If any traffic lights turn yellow or red, something is wrong, and Eva can contact the respective control bodies about their actions and investigations. A grey traffic light signals that more information is required.
Eva’s authority works with sophisticated techniques to determine plot sizes and yields. Satellites and remote-sensing technology provide both digital, verifiable acreage data and reliable yield prediction models. Eva can compensate missing cadastre information and inaccurate harvest volumes by uploading satellite data into Check Organic. This way she aggregates accurate acreage and yield information on which she can rely more than on rough estimations from farmers or inspectors.
In case the regulation in Eva’s country requires her authority to take action, Check Organic sends notifications in real-time to alert Eva.
Check Organic provides tools that support Eva in her task to survey the integrity level in her country. Eva can run various reports (e.g. on aggregated data, export and import transaction volumes) to gain quick insights. Within a few clicks, she is always well prepared for any internal or external meeting or investigations – for example, when a fraud scandal has been discovered or when regulatory changes are due.
We at Organic Services share the vision that, if managed and monitored conscientiously and efficiently at the same time, the organic sector cannot only supply healthy, nutritious food for everyone, but enable all supply chain parties to make an honest living on which they can build a sustainable future. To reach this, digitalisation throughout the sector is key.
Apart from Check Organic, we therefore also offer Group Integrity as a digital solution for farmers, grower groups and businesses with contract manufaction, and Ecert Basic for small or local certification bodies.
Integrity toolset by Organic Services: Check Organic, Group Integrity and Ecert Basic (BIOFACH 2020)
The combination of our three systems considerably facilitates the collaboration between supply chain actors (for example between a farmer group and their external certification body) and creates synergies that benefit the organic industry as a whole.
At the BIOFACH 2020 congress, Jennifer Tucker, Deputy Administrator of the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) National Organic Program (NOP), presented upcoming regulatory changes in the United States to strengthening organic enforcement. Click below for more information, videos and slides...
Visit the Group Integrity website
Visit the Ecert Basic website
Check Organic is a tool by Organic Services. Visit our website and learn more about what we have to offer...