Brussels, 11/04/2013 (Agence Europe) - “Over the next few months, I shall be keeping a very close eye on the question of liability for organic farm products, checks and traceability methods”, the European commissioner for agriculture, Dacian Ciolos, said on Thursday 11 April regarding work underway to strengthen legislation on organic farm products. Fraud has recently been discovered in the organic sector due to the added value generated and the interest of unscrupulous operators. “It is very important that we clamp down on all types of malpractice. We must protect the sector and its quality image”, the commissioner said. On the subject of imported products, transparency must be ensured. The number of applications for equivalence and for the certification of control bodies has risen considerably. “We have to consider how we can best make sure that boosting exchanges of organic products does not render them commonplace and lead to a drop in standards or mean that the checks are insufficient. There too, it will undoubtedly be necessary to clarify the responsibilities of each and every operator”, Ciolos said. Citizens' expectations are very high when it comes to GMOs and the chemical substances used during or after production, he said. The question of the threshold of tolerance and the authorisation of the use of certain substances such as vitamins will have to be considered very carefully, Ciolos pointed out, saying that organic farming increasingly concerns processed products. (LC/transl.jl)