When voting on the three finalists for a new EU-logo for organic production finished at the end of January nearly 130,000 votes had been cast. The winning logo, which got over 60% of the votes, was announced a week later on Monday 8 February. The successful logo was the ‘star leaf’ or ‘Euro-leaf’.

Discussions in the months during the voting period generally concluded that the ‘star leaf’ logo, i.e. the winning logo, was the best option of the three proposals, or as many said the ‘least bad option’. It is not yet clear when a formal decision by the Standing Committee on Organic Farming (SCOF) will betaken. A meeting was planned for the first week of February but as the adoption of the Commissioners was delayed this meeting had to be cancelled.The press release announcing the winner states that the regulation will be amended in the coming weeks. The next planned meeting of the SCOF is at the end of March and, as it is not easy to arrange extra meetings at short notice, it is still unclear whether a decision will be taken before this official meeting in March. It is stated in the EU-legislation that the new logo must be used from 1 July 2010 for new packaging material. The delay in the decision will, of course, result in a shorter implementation time for companies who want to start using the new logo from the beginning. It has been stated that packages with the old logo can be used until stock is used up.

There has been criticism that none of the three finalist logos were good enough. However, the process is concluded and there will now be a new EU-logo for organic production. Accepting the criticism and starting the whole process again would have been too big a loss of prestige for the outgoing Commissioner and the Commission. One lesson learnt from the process is that it probably would have been better to have used professional designers from the start. There has also been concern whether the logo can be printed small enough to fit on small packages or in adverts.

Queries about the colour of the logo are also still unanswered. Is the logo only in green or is black or even other colours possible? Another question has been whether the logo’s white stars on a green background could be printed positively, so there are green (or black) stars on white. Though these questions have not been answered, it does seem that there is a willingness for technical corrections,so that the new logo is functional for users and easily visible for consumers. To explain the meaning of the logo it will probably be possible to put wording like ‘organic’ or ‘bio’ in conjunction with the logo. How the wording should be placed in relation with certification body code number and origin statement is still not finalised.

Eva Mattsson