Hi Bill

As I understand it (never thought that I'd end up advising on 'organic' issues on here!), for food to be labelled in the EU as 'Organic' it needs to meet or exceed the European standards.  

http://www.food.gov.uk/foodindustry/farmingfood/organicfood/

As Ari has pointed out, different EU governments can interpret the EU rules in slightly different ways.  It seems that he can produce organic honey more easily than in the UK - because of both the rural landscape in Finland and his regulator's interpretation of the EU rules.  If his honey meets EU standards as interpeted by his regulators then he can sell honey in the UK, even if he could not find a certification agency in the UK which would have accepted that interpretation of the rules.  That's my interpretation anyway!

Because of its rather fundamentalist approach to the topic, the Soil Association in the UK (an independent campaigning organisation and one of the UK's organic certification agencies) is the Gold Standard and is widely trusted by organic buyers.  Finnish organic honey might be slightly less attractive to the organic honey buyer than one with a Soil Association logo - but the latter seem to have gone too far on this one and made their product almost impossible to produce.

all the best

Gavin

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