NSF/ANSI 305: what "contains organic ingredients" means

NSF describes NSF/ANSI 305, Personal Care Products Containing Organic Ingredients, as the only American National Standard that defines labeling and marketing requirements for personal care products with organic ingredients. It was created in 2009. NSF's public pages do not state the year of the current edition, so we do not give one here.

The core rule is a number. The standard allows the "contains organic ingredients" designation on products that contain at least 70% organic ingredients by weight. A certified product must also state its exact percentage of organic content on the label, so you can tell a 71% product from a 90% one.

It applies to products meant for external use on any part of the body. NSF lists cosmetics, oral care products, moisturizers, lotions, soaps, shower gels and bath beads as examples.

The USDA organic regulations were written for food. NSF explains that they cannot be applied to some personal care products, such as soaps and lotions, which have non-food ingredients and go through different manufacturing steps.

The clearest example is soap. Turning oils into soap takes a chemical reaction called saponification. NSF/ANSI 305 permits that kind of limited chemical processing. NSF notes it would not normally be permitted under traditional organic regulations. Apart from that, the standard keeps requirements for ingredients, materials, processes and production that NSF calls similar to the National Organic Program's.

The FDA does not define or regulate the word organic on cosmetics. USDA regulates it for agricultural products. A personal care product made of agricultural ingredients can be certified under the USDA Organic program if it meets the same standards as food, and it then falls into one of that program's labeling categories.

NSF/ANSI 305 is a private standard that sits beside those categories. USDA says personal care products may be certified to private standards and marketed to them in the United States, and that a product which does not meet the USDA standards may not imply that it is USDA certified organic.

Certification is carried out by an independent organic certification organization. NSF's own certifier for this standard is Quality Assurance International, known as QAI. Its process includes an application with an organic production system plan, an onsite inspection and a technical review, and QAI states that annual onsite inspection continues to be required after certification.

You are most likely to find the mark on products where soap-making or similar processing rules out the USDA seal: soap and body wash, shampoo and hair care, baby wash and shampoo and deodorant.

The label people confuse it with most is COSMOS Organic, which comes from Europe and counts organic content differently. Under COSMOS, a finished product can qualify with 20% of the total formula organic. NSF/ANSI 305 asks for 70% by weight.