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COSMOS Natural Certification
My employers want to claim natural for their products; their lawyers are advising against it because the definition of natural, in Australia at least, is extremely restrictive (lhttps://www.nicnas.gov.au/register-your-business/what-is-a-naturally-occurring-chemical/examples) however, what the lawyers agreed with marketing as a least concern method, was to get audited by COSMOS - because using their logo is not a claim - just a certification standard. Yes, it’s a cheat, and I’m not sure it will hold up in court!
I am busy collecting data from all our raw material suppliers, and completing the required documentation. One thing that surprised me is that I need an organic handling plan even though we are not going through organic certification.
Anyone who has been through this, can you advise any pitfalls that you have come across that I may not have considered? Or offer any advice for things that tripped you up?
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2 Replies
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I think your lawyers are being overly cautious. That legal definition of a “naturally occurring chemical” is really only relevant to whether you need to register your business with NICNAS. NICNAS are just trying to draw the line about what chemicals need to be registered as relevant industrial chemicals and need that very limited naturally occurring definition because they exclude naturally occurring chemicals from being registered as relevant industrial chemicals.There are thousands of products in Australia that are marketed with some sort of natural claim that do not meet that definition. However, the COSMOS certification might be a good point of difference for your marketing team. -
@ozgirl I agree, the legal teams are overly cautious, but with a company the size of ours, the legal team feel that we would be unfairly targeted by any government agency wanting to make an example and cited a similar case where the company was fined millions.
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