Sustainable friendly processing

Summary

A comparison of the sustainability approach and the organic agriculture movement is made. Organic agriculture and processors of organic foods had the focus in developing new (innovative) production methods – sustainability strategies were more focussing on improving/adjusting already existing production technologies. Today it is more likely to find a convergence between sustainability strategies and organic strategies in organic agriculture and food processing. But basically the strategies emerge from different perspectives.
In many organic food producing companies systems for ecological or sustainable management have been introduced on volunteer basis. Some private standards deal with some aspects of sustainability with regard to manufacturing of food whereas the EU Regulation 2092/91 has nearly no specific requirements.