CANADA: ORGANIC COSMETICS AND PERSONAL CARE PRODUCTS SOON
TO BE CONTROLLED
5 May, CAQ
The Quebec Accreditation Board (CAQ) would like to announce
that cosmetics and personal care products being sold in
Quebec and referenced as "organic" must obligatorily be
subjected to verification as of January 1st, 2004. Along
with the State of California, Quebec has thus become the
second market where regulations have been established to
target a framework of mandatory control governing the use
of organic references whenever cosmetics and personal products
are involved.
As of January 1, 2004, cosmetics and personal care products
having organic ingredients among their components and using
the term "organic" on their labels, must at the very least
be subjected to verification by either a CAQ-accredited
certification body or a CAQ-recognized body depending on
the origins of the finished product. In this case the certifier's
name must appear on the product's label using a format such
as "Verified by (name of certifier)".
This provision already applies to agri-food products containing
less than 70% organic ingredients. Since the cosmetics
and personal care product industry is a relatively recent
one, it has not yet been subjected to Quebec's regulations,
applied only to organic agriculture and food products since
the year 2000. The extraordinary popularity of organic
cosmetics has motivated manufacturers to develop new product
lines with constituents containing ingredients resulting
from organic agriculture.
The Quebec Accreditation Board has therefore decided to
extend its control over organic references on cosmetic and
personal care products in order to protect the interests
of consumers and manufacturers from any eventual commercial
abuse. Source: Denis-Paul Bouffard, Executive Director,
Quebec Accreditation Board, 35, Rue Port-Royal Est, 2nd
Floor, Montréal (Québec) H3L 3T1, Canada. Tel.: (514)
864-8999, Fax: (514) 873-2580, info@caqbio.org, http://www.caqbio.org
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