New Compliance Requirements for USDA Organic Certified Coffee

Consumer demand for organic coffee has increased dramatically over the past 10 years, and 30 percent (per Statista) of consumers were willing to buy organic food over non-organic. According to research from the National Coffee Association of the USA, 56 percent of specialty coffee drinkers in the US reported that they’re more likely to buy coffee that is organic certified (2023 NCDT Specialty Coffee Report) .
Consumers find value in organic food that is produced without the use of synthetic nitrogen fertiliser or genetic engineering. To many, buying organic reflects their belief in sustainability, nutrition, and supporting a healthy environment. In an effort to protect the integrity of the organic supply chain and deter fraud, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) , which develops the rules for organic food in the United States, and the National Organic Program (NOP) created the Strengthening Organic Enforcement (SOE) Final Rule (the Rule) , which went into enforcement on 19 March 2024. The expansive,80-page SOE Rule– USDA’s biggest change to organic regulations in several decades – aims to strengthen oversight and enforcement of the production, handling, and sale of organic agricultural products. Regardless of your company’s position of the coffee supply chain, the SOE Rule will affect
your operations. Failure to comply with the SOE Rule can result in significant consequences for your business, including consumer-fraud class action lawsuits, business-to-business litigation, the inability to market coffee as organic, breach of contract disputes with supply chain partners, regulatory enforcement through civil penalties and criminal liability — and a reputational hit for your brand and company.
The SOE Rule strengthened many requirements and created several new ones for maintaining certified organic coffee. Some of the biggest changes to businesses (“operators”) working in organic involve:
• All operators who produce or handle (ie, those who sell, process, or package) organic products need to be certified by a USDA registered certifier;
• All handlers are required to implement a Fraud Prevention Plan (FPP) as part of the Organic System Plan (OSP) ;
• Implications for importers and exporters of coffee;
• The National Organic Program Import Certificate;
• Creation of the USDA INTEGRITY database for managing organic certification information;
• How changes to the SOE Rule affected operators who were already working in organic.
Scope
One of the biggest changes to the SOE Rule is that it has expanded the scope of coverage so that now
handlers of organic agricultural products, with a few exceptions, must have organic certification.
Handlers, such as traders and certain brokers (such as those who help assist sales of coffee between producers and exporters) must obtain certification through a USDA-accredited certifier.
The USDA identified these operators as those who were considered higher risk for committing fraud (looking across all organic agricultural products and not just coffee).
OSP and FPP
The NOP updated the requirements for what must be included in an Organic System Plan (OSP) . The OSP serves multiple functions — it describes an operator’s capacity for producing and managing organic agricultural products; it also functions as a planning tool for resource and budget determination, and serves as a contract between the certifier and the operator. An OSP also details compliance requirements for a manufacturing facility, a product formulation and its ingredients and suppliers, and other details of a manufacturing process. It can also assist auditors in verifying an operator’s compliance with organic regulations and in identifying cases of fraud or non-compliance. The SOE now also requires a Fraud Prevention Plan (FPP), which includes important information that verifies the organic certification and status of suppliers and organic products. This is especially important, since green coffee is often grown and processed by multiple producers and shipped together, and handlers can mistakenly co-mingle organic and non-organic coffee beans. An FPP includes steps a manufacturer or other operator should take at critical points in the supply chain to avoid organic fraud.
Certification
The SOE Rule also requires that importers and foreign exporters to the US obtain organic certification from a USDA-accredited certifier. It is important that the certifier be USDA accredited, as equivalency programs may not always be up to date. The importer or foreign exporter must also get an NOP Import
Certificate issued from its certifier prior to shipping any organic coffee. These are potentially big changes for the supply chain, and importers and exporters should factor in the time necessary to obtain an Import
Certificate when estimating the time needed for shipment and delivery to the customer. The NOP has also recently revised data fields in the Import Certificate. The USDA created the Organic INTEGRITY Database, which contains important certification and contact information on certified operations and which a certifier uses to issue an Import Certificate. Those businesses that were already working in certified-organic coffee prior to the SOE Rule will need to update their OSP to include an FPP and to comply with the revised Import Certificate.
Exemptions
While a goal of the SOE is to reduce likelihood of fraud by requiring higher risk operators to become certified, some operators remain exempt from the new requirements:
• Retailers that only process and/or sell organic products at the final point of sale;
• Operations that handle less than 70 percent organic ingredients;
• Warehouses that store organic products in tamper-evident packaging;
• Customs and logistics brokers;
• Transporters that only transport organic products.
Some operations, such as warehouses that handle bulk organic products, are not exempt from the SOE Rule. This overview of the new SOE rules is a summary – the full body of rules are complex and have many additional implications for coffee. It’s crucial, if you are handling organic coffee, that you carefully review the rules and navigate these complexities – or review the recently released NCA coffee-specific SOE Guide, which will take you step by step through the rules. Safeguarding the integrity of organic will
help protect consumers and businesses – including yours – and help ensure a credible organic supply chain well into the future.
Mark Corey, PhD, is director of Scientific & Regulatory Affairs at the National Coffee Association (NCA) of the USA and staff liaison to the Science Leadership Council (SLC). Prior to joining the NCA, Dr Corey worked in Research & Development roles in coffee for Keurig Dr Pepper, Inc. and Heartland Food Products Group and is a former Chairperson of the NCA’s SLC. He is trained as a food scientist, and his academic research focused on functional foods and human health.
- Mark Corey, PhD, is director of Scientific & Regulatory Affairs at the National Coffee Association (NCA) of the USA and staff liaison to the Science Leadership Council (SLC). Prior to joining the NCA, Dr Corey worked in Research & Development roles in coffee for Keurig Dr Pepper, Inc. and Heartland Food Products Group and is a former Chairperson of the NCA’s SLC. He is trained as a food scientist, and his academic research focused