Tomorrow, Brussels Votes on Whether Salt Still Counts as Organic
Tomorrow the European Parliament’s agriculture committee votes on two amendments that would strip salt from the EU’s organic regulation. We want you to know before the vote, not after — and why we believe the case for removal doesn’t hold.
Tomorrow, the European Parliament’s agriculture committee votes on a technical change that could quietly remove salt from the EU’s organic-production rules.
We want you to know about it before the vote happens, not after.
Since 2021, salt has been part of Regulation (EU) 2018/848 — recognised, in the regulation’s own words, for its natural production methods and its contribution to rural life, traditional salinas especially. Producers across Europe invested to meet the standard: today more than 250 are certified on the Commission’s own register, nearly all of Portugal’s Traditional Salt and Flor de Sal producers among them. Portugal is Europe’s second-largest producer of Flor de Sal, after France.
The regulation is now being revised, and buried in the draft report — prepared by the rapporteur, MEP Camilla Laureti — are two changes, Amendments 150 and 151, that would remove salt from its scope entirely. That is what gets voted on tomorrow. We believe the case for it does not hold, for three plain reasons:
We want you to know about it before the vote happens, not after.
- The iodine argument failsThe main objection — that organic salt clashes with public-health iodine rules — was answered by the European Commission itself, which confirmed in January 2026 that the two are fully compatible.
- It applies the wrong testThe organic regulation judges how a food is produced, not its chemical make-up. Salt made the way ours is — no additives, no industrial processing, full traceability from tide to table — is exactly what it exists to recognise.
- Nobody else asked for itNeither the Commission’s own analysis nor the Council of the EU proposed removing salt. These two amendments reach beyond what the revision was ever meant to do.
Why this matters to us
We learned of this through the Associação de Valorização do Salgado de Castro Marim (AVSCM), which represents every traditional salt producer in our region and has written directly to the committee, urging its members to vote against.
Removing salt from the organic regulation would strip away one of the few legal tools that distinguish and protect artisanal salt in a market dominated by industrial producers. And it would take something from you: organic certification is a reliable signal of how a food is made. Remove it, and the demand for that honesty doesn’t disappear — you are simply left with one less way to trust what you buy.
Where we stand
We are, right now, building the strongest possible case for our own credibility. Our national DOP decision came through in March. The European Commission is reviewing our full specification. We are documenting mineral composition, harvesting technique, and sensory profile with scientific precision — because that is what Radical Transparency demands of us.
Removing salt from organic recognition runs against everything that work stands for. It would not touch our DOP application directly — DOP and organic certification are separate frameworks — but it would close a door to producers across Europe at the exact moment several of us are proving, with hard data, that we deserve more scrutiny, not less.
What happens next
We do not have a vote in that room tomorrow. What we have is a voice, and we are using it the same way the AVSCM did: by saying plainly what is at stake, and trusting the people who do have the vote to weigh it carefully.
We’ll tell you the outcome as soon as we have it, whichever way it goes.
The salt doesn’t change. But the rules that protect it might. We’re watching closely.
— From Castro Marim to your table — worth defending in every grain.