Update to Soil Association Standards for Great Britain and Northern Ireland

The Soil Association standards for Great Britain and Northern Ireland have been updated.

Please view the summary of changes documents:

• Summary of changes – Great Britain

• Summary of changes – Northern Ireland

 

Updates across Soil Association organic standards in Northern Ireland

We’ve made minor updates to our standards for licensees in Northern Ireland to reflect updates to the EU organic regulation in the following areas:

• Updated Soil Association organic farming and growing standards

  • 3.9.1 Housing pigs indoors

  • 3.12.3 Separation between flocks

  • 3.12.15 Pop-hole size and quantity

• Included all inputs to food, feed and crops

These updates retain consistency between our standards for licensees in Great Britain and those in Northern Ireland, following our standards consultation which took place last year.

Read further details of the consultation.

 

Updates across organic standards in Northern Ireland

Some additional inputs and additives are now permitted under the EU organic regulation so we have updated the following standards accordingly:

• Organic Food and Drink standards

  • NI 6.4.1 Permitted additives

• Organic Farming and Growing standards

  • 2.5.2 Permitted fertilisers, soil conditioners and nutrients

  • 2.6.3 Permitted pesticides and plant protection products

  • 3.10.12 Products and substances permitted for use in livestock feed

• Organic Feed standards

  • 9.1.11 Products and substances permitted for use in livestock feeds

  • 10.2.1 Permitted feed additives

We are currently reviewing all inputs and additives to determine if we need additional Soil Association higher standards in place and will run a public consultation on this later in the year.

 

Soil Association Sourcing Requirement Updated

The Soil Association’s Sourcing Organic Ingredients Annex has been updated to version 1.9. This has been updated to reflect the changes to poultry standards (3.12.3 and 3.12.17).

 

Update to Soil Association organic standards for Aquaculture

The Soil Association standards for aquaculture have been updated to:

• align our aquaculture standards with leading organic standard-setters in Europe

• adopt developments in the EU organic regulations into our standards in Great Britain

• enforce recent recommendations made by the UK government’s Animal Welfare Committee

These changes are line with best practice, following an extensive public consultation which took place earlier this year.