Perspective Received: 29 July 2011 Revised: 12 October 2011 Accepted: 28 November 2011 Published online in Wiley Online Library: (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI 10.1002/jsfa.5640 Organic food quality: a framework for concept, definition and evaluation from the European perspective Johannes Kahl, a* Ton Baars, b Susanne B ¨ ugel, c Nicolaas Busscher, a Machteld Huber, d Daniel Kusche, b Ewa Rembialkowska, e Otto Schmid, f Kathrin Seidel, f Bruno Taupier-Letage, g Alberta Velimirov h and Aneta Zale ¸ cka e Abstract Consumers buy organic food because they believe in the high quality of the product. Furthermore, the EU legal regulatory framework for organic food and farming defines high quality of the products as an important goal of production. A major challenge is the need to define food quality concepts and methods for determination. A background is described which allows embedding of the quality definitions as well as evaluation methods into a conceptual framework connected to the vision and mission of organic agriculture and food production. Organic food quality is defined through specific aspects and criteria. For evaluation each criterion has to be described by indicators. The determination of indicators should be through parameters, where parameters are described by methods. Conversely, the conceptual framework is described according to underlying principles and starting definitions are given, but further work has do be done on the detailed scientific description of the indicators. Furthermore, parameters have to be defined for the evaluation of suitability of these indicators for organic food production. c  2012 Society of Chemical Industry Keywords: quality; organic; food; concept; definition INTRODUCTION Consumers buy organic food because they believe in the high quality of the product. 1,2 They are willing to pay for an expected ‘plus’ in organic product and process quality. 3,4 Furthermore, the EU legal regulatory framework for organic food and farming defines high-quality products as an important goal of production (EC Regulation 834/2007). However, some of the recent research findings comparing differently cultivated food do not confirm this ‘extra’ for organic products in a range of food constituents. Yet these results are not without controversy and are subject to discussion. 5–8 Most of the reviewed papers report significant differences regarding dry matter, total sugars, vitamin C and polyphenolic substances between organically and conventionally produced vegetables and fruits. However, most authors agree that the impact of these differences on human health is still unknown. Other studies, focusing more on undesired compounds in food such as residues, found significant differences. 9,10 The question is whether organic food quality should be defined only according to single food constituents or whether these compounds can be seen as indicators for some of the product-oriented quality criteria of organic food. For several years, FQH (Organic Food Quality and Health Association, http://www.organicfqhresearch.org) members, who are experts from different disciplines, have been working on these organic food quality criteria issues. A major challenge is the need to define food quality concepts and methods for determining quality. 11 Organic food quality still needs to be developed further; concepts, definitions and evaluation methods may change during this development. Therefore it is not the aim of this paper to present a final statement about organic food quality but to give arguments for a substantial debate on this topic. The goal of this paper ∗ Correspondence to: Johannes Kahl, Department of Organic Food Quality and Food Culture, University of Kassel, Nordbahnhofstr. 1a, D-37213 Witzenhausen, Germany. E-mail: kahl@uni-kassel.de a Department of Organic Food Quality and Food Culture, University of Kassel, D-37213 Witzenhausen, Germany b Department for Biodynamic Agriculture, University of Kassel, D-37213 Witzenhausen, Germany c Department of Human Nutrition, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen, DK-1958 Frederiksberg C, Denmark d Louis Bolk Institute, NL-3972 LA Driebergen, The Netherlands e Division of Organic Food, Warsaw University of Life Sciences – SGGW, 02-787 Warsaw, Poland f FiBL, Research Institute of Organic Agriculture, CH-5070 Frick, Switzerland g Institut Technique de l’Agriculture Biologique, F-75595 Paris, France h FiBL, Research Institute of Organic Agriculture, A-1070 Vienna, Austria J Sci Food Agric (2012) www.soci.org c  2012 Society of Chemical Industry