COROS
The Common Objectives and Requirements of Organic Standards (COROS) was developed as a joint venture of the IFOAM Organic Guarantee System (OGS) and the GOMA (Global Organic Market Access) project undertaken by FAO, IFOAM and UNCTAD. The concept of COROS was first developed by the International Task Force on Harmonization and Equivalence (ITF) through the Annex of the Guide for assessing Equivalence of Organic Standards and Technical regulations (EquiTool) in 2008 (www.goma-organic.org). The document was compiled on the basis of the IFOAM Basic Standards and Codex Alimentarius as the two pre-existing international reference organic standards, and through the review of a significant number of existing standards and regulations across the world.
COROS is intended for use in international equivalence assessments of organic standards and technical regulations. As an annex to the Equitool it is proposed as a template to guide governments and other stakeholders in conducting objectives-based equivalence assessments of two or more organic standards for production and processing. EquiTool encourages equivalence assessments to be based on reference objectives, an approach that is consistent with WTO guidance for judging equivalence. By basing equivalence discussions and assessments on objectives and related basic requirements, parties may avoid tedious line-by-line assessments of one detailed standard against another. Instead parties can assess whether the details of one standard, although they may vary from those of another standard, meet common objectives and baseline requirements.
COROS is provided in the form of a standard document, which facilitates easy reading and comprehension of the objectives and requirements related to them. However, a high degree of functionality is provided in the form of an electronic spreadsheet version containing three worksheets: the first is for data entry; the second re-organizes the data for objectives-based assessment; the third facilitates a summary analysis.
Here are different versions of COROS for downloads: