Gwendolyn Wyard works on the development of policy strategy through regulatory engagement in the interest of OTA's mission and its members. She has been actively working in the organic industry for 17 years. At the BIOFACH 2020 congress session "Fraud, gaps and loopholes: private and public counteractions and enforcement to complement regulations", Gwendolyn presented the OTA's Organic Fraud Prevention Guide.

The Organic Fraud Prevention Guide walks a company through a systematic risk-based process for developing an organic fraud prevention plan that can then be integrated into the company's organic certification system. The basis for the guide is a combination of criminology and supply chain management. A thorough vulnerability assessment unveils where a company is most vulnerable to fraud and identifies mitigation strategies to deal with those vulnerabilities. Furthermore, the guide contains a section that explains what to do if a someone detects fraud and provides a template that helps to gather all the information needed to successfully file a complaint. A company that has completed the process can be found on an online platform called "find organic" and thereby gets positive exposure.

Gwendolyn concludes that if everybody in the supply chain did such a vulnerability assessment, a strong wall could be built that keeps the fraudsters out. The more entities enrol in the program, the stronger the organic supply chain becomes.

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