EU: a tender for the Assessment of the requests of third countries to be included in the 'List of recognised third countries'

<div style="text-align: justify;">On the DG Agri web site&nbsp;
it has now been published a tender for the Assessment of requests submitted to the European
Commission by Third countries under Article 33(2) of Regulation (EC) No 834/2007 on organic
production and labelling of organic products.<br>The contractor will be required to carry out a
documentary assessment of the technical dossiers provided by 12 countries which have applied for
recognition of organic farming equivalence. The objective is to verify that the technical dossier
meets the requirements of Regulation (EC) No 1235/2008. In particular, the contractor will have to
verify the reliability of the equivalence assessment provided by the applicants and other
information.<br>The contractor will provide a comparison of the standards of the applicant countries
with the 'Codex Alimentarius' guidelines for the production, processing, labelling and marketing of
organically produced foods (GL-32-1999) and with other relevant standards.<br>For the 12 countries,
the contractor will prepare an overview of key types of organic production, production regions and
periods in which this production can be witness-audited.<br>Also the contractor will be required to
verify on the spot the implementation of the organic system in 5 of those countries.<br>The majority
of the countries concerned are located in central and Latin America. The dossiers submitted by the
countries are in Spanish or English language.<br><br>All the documents at the <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/agriculture/tenderdocs/2012/143618/index_en.htm…;