The International Organic Accreditation Service (IOAS) has suspended testing and sampling of organic clothing products from the Control Union (CU) India. This has created problems for the industry. Hence experts and industry veterans have called for a government regulated certification process for organic fabrics like organic cotton.
The independent third party accreditation body IoAS suspended the accreditation of Control Union (India) on March 3 from the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) certification. The reason for this suspension was non-compliance with select applicable GOTS requirements.
CU India handles 75% of India’s organic fabric volume. In such a situation, the suspension of CU India is expected to affect the supply chain of the entire segment of organic clothing. Due to this suspension, spinning mills are being forced to sell CU India certified yarn before March 3 without a certificate of sale transaction.
Expert in the policy of this business S. Chandrasekaran said, “The Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (Apeda) acts as the inspection agency in the field of organic cotton. But there is no government agency involved in the sector of Ginning, Spinning and Yarning. Certification in these areas is done by GOTS and private laboratories. Therefore, the industry wants government monitoring or certification on the entire value addition chain of organic cotton.
According to sources, the government also wants to improve the process of certification in the field of organic yarn. 50,000-60,000 farmers are dependent on this area. Further, the demand of the industry is that the government should implement the organic base for the farmers, besides notifying the norms for organic fabric.
In view of the demand from the spinning mills, the agencies have assured that the certificates issued before March 3 will remain valid. But the concerns of the spinning mills remain.
Chief Advisor, Tamil Nadu Spinning Mills Association (TASMA) K. Venkatachalam said, “We are making products made of cotton yarn certified by the Control Union. We will exchange such products. We are facing problem in this matter. We are selling the yarn with the disclaimer that CU India has certified this cotton.
Most mills are already arranging other certification. CU has a large market share. Government certification will hardly be accepted when ADEPA showed it couldn’t be trusted. CU Mumbai was a disaster of incompetence.