Organic food: labelling rules

How organic food producers, sellers and importer must label organic food products.

You must register with one of the organic control bodies if you produce or sell organic food and you want to label it as organic.

You can decide which body to register with based on your location and needs.

Label food as organic

You can only label pre-packed foods ‘organic’ if at least 95% of the ingredients are organic.

Your food label must state:

  • where any of the product’s farmed ingredients were produced
  • the control body’s code number - for UK-origin produce for code number format is GB-ORG-XX (produce from non-English countries usually have a 3-letter code, such as ‘bio’, ‘öko’ or ‘eko’ instead of ‘org’)

If you’re a retailer, you can label products ‘organic’ as long as:

  • at least 95% of the product’s farmed ingredients are organic
  • you sell direct to customers in your shop - this applies to all retailers from farm shops to supermarkets

List organic ingredients in non-organic products

You can list ingredients in non-organic food products as organic so long as they meet EU organic standards. For example, your label can say ‘organic sugar’ on a food package that contains non-organic ingredients. You must also include the control body’s code number on the label.

You must use the EU organic logo on pre-packaged organic food from the EU.

EU organic logo
Published 29 April 2016