Europeʼs new logo for organic food

Summary

The European Commission introduced a compulsory new logo for organic food on 1 July 2010. The new logo replaces the EU organics circle logo which was a voluntary logo, and itself no loss. The new logo is mandated on all organic products packaged in the EU. The logo design is described as stars in a leaf pattern. It is a green rectangle with the stars reversed out. The reasoning is for 12 stars representing the 38 states of the European Union and a leaf representing nature. In the mind’s eye of a few Eurocrats, the formula is ‘Stars + Leaf = Europe + Nature = Organics’. The logo is accompanied by two lines of code; the first for the certification and the second for the origin of the ingredients. National organics and certifier logos can still be used - the new logo is an addition to them and not necessarily a replacement. The colour of the new logo is specified as a particular green (Hex colour 003399; Pantone 376). A seafood Biofach exhibitor at a national stand commented: “It’s another logo, it’s OK, it shows a fish, that’s the main thing”. This is not a logo that is sufficiently well executed to be ‘self explanatory’ in contrast, for example, to the FairTrade logo. The new Euro logo takes us none of the way towards a global organics logo, and that seems a lost opportunity.