Organic Label Claims

Consumer’s main concern is the amount of information available, true or false, on daily use home, personal hygiene products and even food that may be harmful to their health. The same products that every family member uses on a daily basis. This concern plus “green living” becoming a popular issue has helped feed companies’ need to manufacture goods that are labelled organic.

Even large retailers like Wal-Mart in the U.S or Tesco in Britain have started their own line of natural and organic products to answer to this large consumer demand.

In the case of organic cosmetic products there is no government regulation as to natural and organic cosmetics. Leaving this practice up to the company itself to decide if their products are worthy or not of being labelled natural. Some companies have adopted the practice of privately regulating their products in order to label them accordingly. The regulation rules used by some companies have been developed by groups like the French organic certifier Ecocert, the Soil Association in Britain and the recently established Oasis, or Organic and Sustainable Industry Standards in the United States.

In Oasis’ case, they have set standards of organic labeling on products that contain a minimum of 85% of organic ingredients. A minimum that will be raised to 95% in the next three years. Oasis is a trade association composed of some of the largest groups in the cosmetic industry, such as Estée Lauder and L’Oréal. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s norms are a little higher allowing organic labeling on food products that have 95% of organic ingredients in them.

It is very important when buying cosmetic products to look for the organic label of certification since it gives the consumer a variety of information: the brand name of the manufacturer, certification details and names of the ingredients. This gives you the opportunity to check what is really used in your product of choice.