The Philippine National Standard for Organic Agriculture (PNS OA)
The Philippine National Standard for Organic Agriculture (PNS OA) was originally prepared and adopted in 2003 for the purpose of promoting organic agriculture and enhancing market competitiveness by providing a uniform approach to the requirements on conversion, crop production, animal production, special products, processing, labeling, and consumer information.
In keeping with the developments of the global organic industry, the revision of the PNS OA was started through the creation of a Technical Working Group (TWG) composed of members coming from the government agencies, academe, certification bodies, and private sector. Likewise, public consultative meetings were held in the National Capital Region (NCR), Davao, and Iloilo with the aim of generating comments from the various stakeholders of the organic industry.
The revision of the PNS OA was undertaken in order to achieve equivalence with the ASEAN Standard for Organic Agriculture (ASOA). PNS/BAFS 07:2016 covers several scope, namely: (a) conversion; (b) crop production; (c) animal production; (d) beekeeping; (e) special products; (f) processing; (g) labeling and consumer information; (h) traceability; and (i) requirements for the inclusion of substances for organic production. The different scopes should be treated as one standard on organic agriculture with the various parts complementing each other.
