Organic Ceritifications: What Do They Mean?

So I've been curious about organic certifications and how/if the different ones use different criteria. This was prompted by my interest in doing a campaign for Oregon Tilth with a few colleagues and we needed to find out what differentiates one organic certification from the next. So I did a bit of research, and here are 4 of the major organic certifications that are used in the western U.S. and how they are different and the same.

OTCO: Oregon Tilth uses the Organic certifications laid out by the USDA's National Organic Program and certifies crop production, wildcrop harvesting, livestock production, and handling production (such as restaurants). Oregon Tilth also provides certifications for a number of different organic certification programs including the European and Canadian ones.  Oregon Tilth, however, is more than just a certification agency they are also a nonprofit organization that provides education and advocacy for organic farms and farmers. Some of the companies certified organic by OTCO include: Organically Grown Company, Kettle Chips,  Annie's Homegrown,     Organic Valley and Laurelwood brewery.


CCOF: California Certified Organic Farming was one of the first organic certification programs. It has its own guidelines for organic certification but it is also recognized by the USDA program. CCOF also has a trade association and a foundation which is concerned with education, research, and advocacy. Interestingly CCOF was originally a group of farmers that had their own published standards and certified each other. Also their standards were the foundation for the USDA ones.


QAI: Quality Assurance International is a U.S. based organic certification program and is "the leading provider of organic certifications worldwide." Again it uses the USDA's criteria for certifying organic products. They certify a (very) long list of different companies.

OCIA: This is one that I'd never heard of before starting my research.  The Organic Crop Improvement Association provides Organic certifications and "access to organic markets." They seem like the most international of the organic certification organizations I looked at and are accredited by the USDA, IFOAM, JAS, CARTV, and MAG. They have been around since 1985 and are a non-profit, and member owned "agricultural organization" which is again concerned with education and research. They also certify a huge number of different producers and products.

Conclusion: Well by comparing these four programs I yielded way more similarities than differences (at least with the criteria that I chose to compare them with). They are all non-profits, they all go by USDA organic standards,  have active research and education campaigns and are all member controlled. This is awesome becasue it means that the different organizations are all cerifying to the same standards, guarantying that the porducts are actually organic. They seem like they are unified in their quest to produce better organic products and educate consumers and are not in direct competition with one another. They also all seem to serve their own regions even if they are international.

I think that if I dug a bit deeper I would find bigger differences associated with costs, scale and etc. but at least the most important fact to consumers, quality of certification, seems to be excellent across the board.