Ecocert auditing - how does it work?

The other day, someone told me:
“Ah… I don’t think organic certification is real.”
It made me pause, and argue with active listening, based on my experience.

Two years before deciding to leave a company I worked for in the natural products area, I had also as a task to lead the Ecocert auditing process internally. And from that experience, I can say: the system is far from random or superficial.

The audit didn’t start with vague questions. It started with the batch code of a random product that had been sold recently. From there, we had to trace everything, step by step, through all the company’s registration platforms, down to the warehouse.
(and also guarantee that the supplier of the plant natural products, the plant fields and factories used for transformation, were also certified)

The auditor checked:
- If organic products were physically separated from conventional ones
- If non-conformity areas were clearly defined and marked on the floor
- If documentation, traceability, and physical reality actually matched

As someone also from quality control (my field, mainly from my master's), I’ll be honest: yes I think the certifications, at least the ones I've been through, seem valid, if you have strong QC protocols, you know how to prepare for an Ecocert audit.
You know what matters, how to organize data, and how to answer correctly.
But preparation alone isn’t enough.

What really makes the difference is, I humbly believe:
- A robust batch registration software
- The use of technology, like barcode scanning that feeds directly into the software system when raw materials (e.g. vegetable oils) enter the warehouse
- Incoming analysis at reception
- And setting up mechanisms to randomly assign samples every 3 to 5 months to outsourced laboratories for deeper analysis (pesticides, chromatography, microbial analysis, etc).
- Also, I believe, have at your display, some equipment for internal laboratory analysis, among other processes (these steps should be clearly defined in a flowchart of entrances and exits of products).

All of this is key. For me it was a pleasure really to organize all these steps in the company, while I was there we didn't fail an audit.

So is organic certification perfect? Probably not.
Is it “not real”? From my experience, absolutely not. At least from my experience with Ecocert, I found them professional.

The systems, technology, and quality control culture of the company behind it are key to pass. 😊
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