The first edition of Manuals for the integrated quality for organic products its ready. They represent the outcome of the Interreg Italy – Albania Program – Project PAB II, followed-up by MAIB (the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Bari), and ICEA, in cooperation with MAIB itself and the association Agronomists without Frontiers (an Italian NGO focused on agriculture). They were presented in a seminar held in MAIB (picture). In short, a group of technicians of both countries worked together with some organic farmers of Apulia and Albania to draw up guidelines for the production chains of olive oil, wine, and medical herbs produced according to the organic method. In these guidelines, that can be easily implemented by organized production chains, have been integrated different standards that can be applied to organic food products, and specifically:

• the most important international organic standards (EU, NOP-USDA, JAS, IFOAM);
• food hygiene and safety standards and in particular HACCP standards;
• standards for food production chain traceability.
The first results of these works were presented in April in Monopoli (Bari, Italy) during the Biol-Biol Fish Prize.