Continued confusion over 'bio' term in Spain

A court in the Spanish region of Navarra has upheld the decision by the local authorities there to make amendments to the regulations governing the production and labelling of organic food products allowing dairy companies currently using the term 'bio' to continue to do so, even if the products are not organic. The Navarra authorities said that they considered the term 'bio' to have no relation with organic production.

Not surprisingly, the local organic food producers in Navarra criticised the decision, saying that it contravenes EU regulations and also allows companies to flaunt regulations on labelling, false claims and competition. They said that the term 'bio' has become so closely linked with organic products in consumers' minds that any non-organic product - such as Danone's Bio yoghurts - which carry the name are effectively, and illegally, benefiting from the positive image of organic produce.

So the courts were called in to rule on whether the decision was legal or not, and in a statement issued this week, they ruled that the term 'bio' had a closer etymological link with the word 'life' (as in biology or biodiversity) than with the word organic (which would normally be shortened to 'eco' in Spanish), and that the request from the Spanish dairy companies for a change in the law could be upheld.

The court added that the dairy producers had never pretended that their 'bio' products were organic, and had always used the term to products containing the live bacteria bifidus (hence the use of the term bio in the sense of life). Furthermore, the court said, this link between the word 'bio' and the friendly bacteria is known and understood by the majority of consumers, and therefore there is little risk of such products being mistaken for organic products.

While there might be more confusion over the term 'bio' in, say, France, where the word for organic food is 'biologique', frequently shortened to 'bio', the court stressed that the Spanish word for organic is 'ecologico', or 'eco' for short, and that the confusion should not therefore arise.

The ruling is likely to have ramifications for the organic food industry in Spain and in Europe as a whole, not least because each region of Spain could introduce its own rules, making it extremely confusing for consumers and potentially expensive for producers, who could have to change the packaging of their products from region to region.

Moreover, the court based its decision on what it said was essentially an unclear passage in the EU regulations on organic production. The passage seems to say that any national law allowing such terms to be used for non-organic products would contravene EU regulations, but the court said that the wording was in fact "confusing and contradictory".

But the ruling also has wider implications in that Danone has already changed the name of its Bio yoghurts in other EU countries because the term is confusing - not least in France where it has changed the name to Activia, a name which it uses for the brand in other countries already.

The Navarra decision has further muddied the waters in the Spanish organic food sector, where there has already been a great deal of confusion over the use of the term 'bio'. In fact, the European Commission has already told Spain that it must change its rules - at both national and regional level - to prevent the term 'bio' being used. The national authorities have always contended that the rules do not contravene EU regulations, and could now see themselves brought before the European Court of Justice to be forced to change the rules.