IOAS threatens organicfraud.org:
change your website or we will sue you!
(new since nov. 18)
In september 2006 we received a letter from IOAS lawyer ‘Van Lottringen”. They basically said: IOAS feels that Organicfraud.org makes negative statements about IOAS which are false. If you do not withdraw these or do not give the IOAS point of view on your website we will go to court.
Here are the four statements which IOAS finds offensive:
- The certifiers in far away parts of the world are only visited and controlled once in every two years. The IOAS people (almost) never visit a field.
- The confidence that IOAS ( and certifiers like Soil Association) have in local controllers is not always justifiable and should be labelled: very naive.
- IOAS is really inadequate, because it cannot detect fraud at the field-level, and that is the place where it really happens.
- The quote “If the IOAS would change to unannounced controls they will loose 50 % of their clients” and the weak explanation for this loss of clients seems to indicate that IOAS knows that fraud is taking place.
We from Organicfraud.org are convinced that we stand a good chance in court to defend our statements with succes. We are not afraid to write the truth. If organisations are damaged by the truth, they should change their habits, not fight their opponents.
As soon as new developments occur, we will write it here.