Formed in 1946, the Soil Association is the largest and oldest organic food certification and advocacy organization in the U.K. The Soil Association offers product certification to farmers, packers, retailers, clothing makers, and health and beauty product manufacturers both in the U.K. and internationally. Notably, the Soil Association claims to certify 2,600 individual products from 80 manufacturers in the health and beauty sector. The Soil Association claims its standards are more rigorious than those set by the European Union. The group recently said it will not certify products containing nanoparticles:
The Soil Association is the first organization in the world to ban nanoparticles. There should be no place for nanoparticles in health and beauty products or food.
As all products certified by the Soil Association are marked with the organization’s logo, its rejection of products containing nanoparticles thus creates a "reverse" label many advocacy groups will undoubtedly embrace. Simply put, products with the Soil Association logo are "nano-free."
The group’s new rules focus on man-made nanoparticles "whose basic partical size is less than 125nm and whose mean particle size is less than 200nm."
