Most people know the meaning of a symbol with twelve yellow stars on a blue backdrop. The same goes for five rings in yellow, blue, red, green and black. But do you know what a white AB with a butterfly on a green backdrop means - or a small red ladybird on a leaf?

In a world where consumers are making up their minds in split seconds, instant brand recognition is crucial. Some people only look at the price tag, but more and more consumers look for organic produce and other kinds of quality food. Unfortunately this quest is sometimes made harder by the jungle of private, regional, national and European labels that are used to give our food identity and history.

I have always been in favour of empowering consumers to make informed choices rather than trying to politically steer demand from the top downwards. Creating a strong European organic logo, which sends a clear message about the benefits of organic production, is all about this: guiding consumers through the label jungle. The organic logo will be mandatory for all pre-packaged organic products from the EU. On top of that, all organic products from third countries can use the EU logo on a voluntary basis.

We need one logo and one identity in order to create one real and well-functioning European market for organic products. This way it is easier for an organic farmer from Sicily to sell his tomatoes to a supermarket in Stockholm and organic farmers throughout Europe will be able to benefit from a home market of almost half a billion people.

In order to get the best possible logo I have decided to give Europe’s up-and-coming design talents the chance to create our logo. The Commission has just launched a competition for all EU students of art or design. The best logos will be submitted to online voting and the winner will be awarded a cash prize of € 6,000.

But there is much more to winning than the cash prize. I can’t imagine a better way to kick off a design career than to be able to take credit for a logo that would be printed on millions of product packages, that will be seen and searched for by millions of Europeans on a daily basis and that is instantly associated with something positive.

As for the butterfly and the ladybird logos, which I mentioned earlier, those are French and Italian organic logos. And they, as well as other organic logos, can of course still be used together with the new EU logo.

By Mariann Fischer Boel, the European Commissioner for Agriculture and rural development

You can read the Commissioner’s blog here.

To participate in the competition, click here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 20th, 2009 at 09:00 and is filed under Campaigns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.