The Hain Celestial group, a leading US marketer of natural and organic personal care products, headquartered in Melville, NY, recently announced the program of reformulation launched two years ago to adhere to the NSF/ANSI 305 standard, is bearing fruits, since the brands Avalon Organics and Earth’s Best Organic now in the process of certification and relabelling. "These changes affect all production as of November, 2011,” said Irwin D. Simon, President and Chief Executive Officer of Hain Celestial.

Hain Celestial’s Avalon

The NSF/ANSI 305 Standard for Personal Care Products Containing Organic Ingredients specifies the materials, processes, production criteria and conditions that must be met in order to make organic label and marketing claims. Under this standard, all personal care products with "organic" claims (other than ingredient list) must contain a minimum organic content of 70% and be formulated without any ingredient or process disallowed by the NSF.

Jason Thin-to-Thick Conditioner (Hain Celestial Group)

So the Company’s other natural brands may also become compliant to the standard, the Jason, Zia natural skincare, and Alba Botanica brands have all updated their packaging to identify as organic only specific ingredients on products’ ingredient lists. “These changes have affected all production as of June, 2011,” the company said in a release.

This announcement follows the launched of a lawsuit by a California-based public advocacy group against 26 cosmetics companies alleging they are misleadingly labelling their products as organic. Jason’s Thin-to-Thick conditioner, which is marketed by the Hain Celestial Group, was in the list of products mentioned in the lawsuit.

Certification is the main challenge for natural and organic cosmetic brands operating in the US market today. Certification bodies are competing to impose their own standards, and retailers, such as Whole Foods Market require a third-party certification of all personal care products and cosmetics making an “organic” claim before being sold in their stores.