The Senate Bill 532/2015 sponsored by Senator Marta Suplicy, was approved by the Committee on Transparency, Governance, Supervision and Control and Consumer Protection (CTFC) of the Brazilian Senate.
According to the project, in order to be labelled an organic cosmetic, a product must first have its inputs certified according to the Law on Organic Agriculture (10.831/2003) or obtained through an organic or sustainable farming process not detrimental to the local ecosystem.
According to Senator Suplicy, there is currently no regulation in Brazil for the registration and commercialization of organic cosmetics. "The lack of regulation for organic cosmetics negatively affects the relationship between producers and consumers, it makes more difficult to control the products and it weakens the competitiveness of Brazilian companies on domestic and international markets," said the senator.
Risks for the consumers
According to Senator Eduardo Lopes, the rapporteur of the bill, this legal loophole may be detrimental to the consumers, as there is currently no rule in Brazil to determine what is an organic cosmetic.
The new text therefore provides that the production of organic cosmetics inputs should "whenever possible comply with organic and mechanical farming methods, as opposed to the use of synthetic materials, it should prohibit the use of genetically modified organisms and ionizing radiation at any stage of the production, transformation, storage, distribution and marketing processes, and aim at protecting the environment."
