GfRS and IOAS: Performance – not just compliance!

Dr. Jochen Neuendorff,
Managing Director / Gesellschaft für Ressourcenschutz mbH (GfRS)

Dr. Jochen Neuendorff is managing director of the certification body Ressouce Protection Ltd. (GfRS Gesellschaft fuer Ressourcenschutz mbH, www.sicher.bio) since 1989. Besides auditing organic and sustainability standards, he participated in various research and development projects to bring innovation to the organic control system. He is co-founder of the Anti Fraud Initiative (www.organic-integrity.org)

David Crucefix
Executive Director /Lead Auditor / IOAS Inc

David joined the IOAS as Assistant Executive Director in 2000 after an earlier career in development aid working mainly in the Caribbean islands, Africa and Asia. With IOAS he has performed many assessments of certification bodies all over the world.

At the BIOFACH 2020 congress session "Fraud, gaps and loopholes: private and public counteractions and enforcement to complement regulations", Jochen Neuendorff pointed out three dimensions where improvements are required:

  • the ISO 17065 must be applied properly: incompetent operators must be disguised and penalized
  • inspectors must be competent enough to apply technological instruments such as mass balance and others. Those instruments must be combinable and tailored to each individual inspection situation - there is no universal solution.
  • the competent accessors must refer to more than formalities when evaluating the work of the inspectors

David Crucefix called for more CBs to implement risk-based approaches when inspecting operators. He pointed out that the biggest risk emerges from the different motivation of certifiers and operators on their business goals: some strive for maximum growth, some for maximum integrity and reputation, and of course many strive for something in between that. To ensure better focus on the poor performers (certifiers and operators) and to be able to upgrade their competence, it is crucial that they can be more easily identified. In doing so, a more flexible approach with more common sense is required. Operators, certifiers, accreditation bodies must all shift towards improving their individual performance - because it's not just about compliance.

Please have a look at the video below and feel free to flick through the powerpoint-slides from the presentation underneath.

VIDEO

POWERPOINT SLIDES

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