The Accredited Certifiers Association (ACA) and the International Organic Inspectors Association (IOIA) have released their industry-wide "Best Practice" on May 14th. The document is titled Contingency Plans for Verifying Compliance When On-Site Inspections are not Possible and it outlines tools that we can use to verify organic compliance while travel restrictions are in place and on-site inspections may not be possible.

OneCert staff and contract inspectors participated in the development of the Best Practices along with more than 100 others. We have developed our own contingency plans based on the Best Practice and OneCert will be starting with Records Audits for most of new and our renewing clients. The goal of the records audits is to verify compliance until we are able to conduct on-site inspections, and to shorten the on-site inspections when they can take place.

It is important to note that for new operations, the on-site inspection is still mandatory. The NOP has not waived this requirement, and we cannot grant certification without an onsite inspection to verify compliance. If you are a new applicant with OneCert, please know that we will do our best to assess risk and schedule your on-site inspections with local inspectors to limit travel. Please be sure to communicate any local travel restrictions, or facility health and safety requirements to OneCert and your inspector.

If you have any questions about OneCert's inspection plans during the pandemic, please feel free to call or email us at inspect@onecert.com.