PRESS RELEASE
Date: February 3, 2011
New management structure of the IOAS
The International Organic Accreditation Service (IOAS) announces today that Ken Commins, Executive Director of the company since its founding in 1997, has chosen to step down from the role as of April 30th, 2011.
Ken will remain within the company as part-time Finance & Development Manager as well as taking on specific responsibilities within the new management structure.
The company will be led by Jan Deane and David Crucefix as Joint Executive Directors. Jan and David are well known to all IOAS collaborators as long serving managers in the IOAS and the IOAS Board are pleased that they are willing to take on these new responsibilities.
IOAS President Boudewijn van Elzakker commented ‘Ken, Jan and David have all worked together as the management team of the IOAS for more than 10 years. As a result the IOAS Board has great confidence that the new structure will take the organisation forward? with the same dynamism and commitment to organic integrity that has been a trademark of the IOAS since its inception’.
As incoming Executive Director (Operations), Jan Deane stated ‘Clearly this is not a farewell to Ken as he will retain an important role within the IOAS. Nevertheless we would like to publicly recognise his massive contribution to organic integrity and conformity assessment on the international stage over 20 years’.
David Crucefix, who will take on the role of Executive Director (Business) in the new structure, confirmed that the IOAS will remain committed to its core values but continue to explore new opportunities with existing and new scheme owners. ‘Cultivating integrity and trust across the organic community’ is our guiding mission statement and we will continue to pursue that theme working with both private and public sectors in order to assist further expansion of organic agriculture across the world’
The International Organic Accreditation Service is an independent, non-profit organisation that works to ensure trust and fair trade in products labelled as organic.
The services we provide assist:
- farmers and processors of such products to work in a fair environment;
- traders and retailers to sell their products both locally and across the world;
- certification bodies in demonstrating their competence and objectivity;
- government authorities to implement their legislation on labelling and verify the integrity of imports;
- consumers of organic and environmentally sound products to buy with confidence.
- Our main activity is to verify the competence of certification bodies active in the field of organic and sustainable agriculture. We work world-wide, focusing our work solely in this field and apply our unparalleled experience with energy and commitment. We ourselves are supervised by several government agencies and private organisations so you can be sure that our integrity is not only based on our word.
By ‘cultivating integrity’ we help to expand the area of land under organic and ecological management throughout the world - our contribution to a sustainable planet.
Our direct clients are the certification or control bodies that inspect farms, processors and traders and the main services we provide are as follows:
IFOAM accreditation
Global Organic System Accreditation
ISO Guide 65 accreditation
Assessment for the European Union Recognition Programme
Assessment for the Canada Organic Regime
Organic Textiles Standard accreditation
Textiles Exchange accreditation
Training for government authorities and control bodies
For more information on the IOAS please visit www.ioas.org
Press contact: David Crucefix at crucefix@ioas.org
