What Product 'Properties' should OFN-Aus support?

A Property can be attached to an Enterprise e.g. this Producer is Certified Organic. A Product inherits Properties from its Producer
The Properties are shown throughout the Shopping experience
(see here for more detail)

Over time this could turn into a much more sophisticated p2p guarantee system, with lots more flexibility, endorsements etc. But for now we just need a simple way to start capturing and filtering by common certifications and practices.

Are there any other Properties that you need to have available to explain your production practices?

Name: Presentation: Value, entered for each product e.g. [link]

Definitely yes

  • Org-Cert: Certified Organic: NASAA Cert.: 0123123
  • Org-Conv: Organic - In Conversion: “We started the conversion process 2 years ago and are on track” include organic industry number
  • Biod-Cert: Biodynamic - certified: XX No. 1234123
  • Free Range: Free Range: “Cert. Assoc and Number”
  • Fair-trade: Fair Trade “cert.?”
  • MSC: Marine Stewardship Council “cert. number”
  • Certified Naturally Farmed

Most likely yes - self-stated but fairly clear what is meant - we can do more work on definitions for clarity

  • Org-NonCert: Organic Practices (not certified): "We have been
  • Chem-free: Chemical Free: “Enterprise describes what this means to them”
  • Pest-free: Pesticide Free: “enterprise describes what this means to them”
  • Grassfed: Grass Fed [NB. replacing all Pasture Fed with Grass Fed]

Possibilities for further discussion and debate - contentious, so needing some stronger arguments before they would be included.

  • Beyond Organic

  • Holistic

  • Nutrient dense

  • Participatory / Peer guarantee system

Robert Pekin:
Beyond Organic - over and above the standards; eg humic level; fair employment.
Pesticide Free
Chemical Free
Grassfed
Landcare certified
Holistic
Biodynamic

Future
Nutrient dense (in future, when final product can be measured)
Participatory Guarantee System (member of…)

In future, think about whether we set 4-5 big categories / communities ie all organic/biodynamic rolled up in one and then sub categories as drill down…or else might get unweildy and also then encourages discussion within these larger communties.

Don’t you have badges also for Fair Trade, and for Sustainable fishing for example, like MSC (www.msc.org)?

We are in the process of restricting property ‘type’ creation to the site administrator - so we will manage the properties available to people to use. They will then be able to apply them, put their own certification numbers etc in . .

so see above for my updated proposal for Aus properties, based on quite a few conversations - no doubt will continue to evolve!!

further discussion needed on some, key points:

  • our inclusion of a property type implies our implicit endorsement of its use, so we need to be a bit careful
  • we want a better understanding of the issues and strong community consensus before introducing more contentious ones - particularly where they could be (or are) perceived as misleading to customers
  • e.g. ‘beyond organic’ - I’m told it is perceived as suggesting that the producer IS certified AND is doing more, where this is often not the case.

Thoughts? @oeoeaio @lisahill @serenity @sstead @NickWeir @lin_d_hop

List looks great - we’d definitely need to have the naturally farmed and chem-free as options, as that is what a lot of our farmers do. Would be great to be locked in list managed by OFN.

If something needs a little more clarification, we could use the certification number section to write ‘more details in producer overview’ then write more info regarding the farmer’s processes into that area.

is ‘naturally farmed’ something that is certified in anyway? or would you be willing to provide a short-blurb about expectations of what this means? e.g. for food connect to accept that one of it’s farmers is naturally farmed or chemical free what you mean by that?

noticed requests for ‘organic ingredients’ and ‘non-treated’ . . am removing them for now until we have more information / strong request for them to be included - @lisahill looks like these were FC’s so can discuss if you really want em back :smile:

Organic Ingredients is useful as this is different to certification and a lot of our processors do this.

However, 20% organic ingredients is very different to 100% organic ingredients. And I’d hate for someone who made cakes with a few organic fruits and all other inorganic ingredients to proudly sport the label.

It would need clarification as to what organic ingredients means…

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on what properties ofn uk will support?

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