Harmonized naturals certification will not happen over night

“The cosmetic industry seems obsessed by this notion of harmonized standards yet seems unaware that it took the organic food movement over 40 years to get most of the standards on a level field,”​ said Gay Timmons, president of Oh, Oh Organic and chairperson of Oasis, an organic certification body for the US personal care market.

Timmons’ comments follow criticisms over the new European-wide certification standard, Cosmos, which was expected by some to provide a bridge towards a unified standard with the US industry, and ultimately a globally recognized standard.

However, when it was officially declared earlier this month that the Cosmos standard would come into being this Autumn, critics said it was too little too late.

Flurry of certification activity​

This is because, in the past 18 months or so there has been a flurry of other certification bodies, both in the US, Europe and worldwide, that have come on to the scene, which some critics believe has reduced the potency of Cosmos.

But Timmons believes that because organic and natural cosmetic standards are still in their relative infancy, there is still a long way to go before harmonized standards can make an impact on international markets.

Food industry still not there after 40 years​

“Even today there is no reciprocity between the US and the EU for organic food standards. How can there be an expectation that the cosmetic industry is any more agreeable than the food industry?”​ she told Cosmetics Design.

Right now certification is fulfilling a role of demonstrating to the personal care industry how to conform to standards, while simultaneously keeping the industry on its feet and helping to ensure that those standards are credible, Timmons believes.

“We need companies to make decisions to get certified to any standard in order to begin the process of ‘organic’ education and so to develop credibility through transparency,”​ she said.