Why organic?

We always wanted our herbs and blends to be produced using the highest quality ingredients with no risk of chemical toxicity residue affecting the homeostasis of our horses. It also didn't hurt that they have the least impact on local communities where they're grown, and the local environment. Equally, the UK government has reported that organic farming is better for wildlife, causes lower pollution from sprays, produces less carbon dioxide and reduces the risks of global warming.

Quality isn’t defined by any one ingredient, test, or seal of approval. Quality means working meticulously at every step to ensure we bring you exceptional products to support your horse's health, from global organic sourcing to meticulous in-house manufacturing.

Our Herbs

Our mission has always been to proactively help our clients nutritionally support the healthy equilibrium, the functioning integrity and the vitality - the vital force - of their horse, which is why we use nature's finest restorative, bioactive, regenerative herbal phytonutrients, free from chemical treatments, artificial synthetic additives, mould inhibitors and preservatives.

Over the years we've naturally gravitated towards product suppliers who meet rigorous standards based on chemical-free ingredients, ethical sourcing, and a commitment to low environmental impact and sustainability. This has led us to one trading house in particular who not only supply our herbs, but also grow many of them especially for us - Organic Herb Trading Company (OHT).

OHT ensure that their growers are risk-assessed and monitored regularly to ensure that goods supplied are fully traceable, and that all policies and relevant legislation is complied with. Their growers work hard to maintain healthy soils and ecosystems, co-operate with wildlife, and provide fair working conditions, all the while delivering a high quality product.

They also sponsor several of their suppliers in obtaining FairWild certification, which guarantees that the small-scale farmers receive a fair reward for their work. Even better, this secures the tradition, history and protection of wild growing plants, and also promotes the sustainable management and collection of wild plants, while addressing fair trade practices and securing the livelihoods of the collectors.

At EquiNatural, we simply will not compromise on quality for our herbs. OHT are inspected and approved by leading third party organisations that range from Soil Association organic certification to BRC, Fairtrade and FairWild. A full list of the accreditations they hold – including copies of the certificates - can be provided on request; see below for the full list of certifications.

In addition, they routinely carry out analysis on their product range using a risk based system for the following:

• Pesticide residues

• Microbiological load

• Mycotoxins

• Heavy metals

• Essential Oils

To see OHT's multiple certifications, see the bottom of this page.

Our EquiVita/VitaComplete Mineral Solutions

We use Premier Nutrition to mill our EquiVita and VitaComplete mineral premix to our unique formula in their state-of-the-art facility in Rugely, Staffordshire. They're the first and only UK premix manufacturer to achieve FSSC 22000 accreditation - a risk-based global management system which controls food safety hazards, minimise risks and ensures the production of safe feed. They're also fully accredited with UFAS, ISO 14002, SEDEX and BETA NOPS®.

Premier are part of the AB Agri Community of businesses, a unique group of leading agricultural businesses operating across the food supply chain. AB Agri consists of multiple businesses and brands and is part of Associated British Foods plc (ABF) which means they have the advantage of being backed by a truly global organisation.

Product safety is paramount within their factory; manual handling is kept to a minimum with seamless traceability, using barcode technology, guaranteeing product integrity from raw material to finished product.

Our account manager is Ruth Bishop, who joined Premier Nutrition in 2016. She is well recognised in the world of equine nutrition, having been in various commercial nutrition roles for over 20 years. She's also consulted for the BEF World Class Performance squads, is the author of the Horse Nutrition Bible, and wrote the Dr Ruth nutrition column in Horse and Hound for several years. Ruth is ably assisted by Clare McCafferty (BSc(Hons) in Applied Animal Science), who joined Premier in 2015. Clare's who we deal with most at ground level.

Ruth is also an active member of the UK BETA Feed Committee and is an acknowledged expert in the areas of claims and labelling, and Naturally Occurring Prohibited Substances (NOPS). Clare's areas of expertise are formulations, product design, NOPs, equine nutrition, labelling and legislation. She is also an R-SQP, has HACCP intermediate 3 qualifications and is FAR registered.

Our EquiVita/VitaComplete range is in very safe hands with Ruth and Clare. They provide expert support to their customers in areas such as product development, regulatory compliance and quality assurance, including NOPS management.

If you would like any further information on Premier's manufacturing process or safety, please e-mail info@premiernutrition.co.uk.

Organic Certification - ever wondered what it means and why it matters?

It's no secret that we at Equinatural choose to supply ingredients from organically certified suppliers. However, Trading Standards legislation is very clear on the fact that I'm not permitted to advertise our herbal products with the Certified Organic logo because ... as a company we ourselves aren't 'certified' organic.

Reasons? Manyfold.

• To claim a product or business is 'organic' you have to hold a (very costly) Organic Certificate, which we don't, therefore we can't advertise our herbs and blends as 'organic', nor label them as such. The nearest we're allowed to get is with an asterisk and the statement * Produced to ecological standards and free from agro-chemicals.

• On top of this, you need to get your cheque-book out every year. In order to maintain an Organic Certificate, this involves a yearly inspection which again is very pricey, as in £-thousands - literally. Provided we passed this inspection each year, we'd then receive our renewed Certificate each year.

• There's also a huge paper audit trail that the law requires is in place, in order to trade organic products. Every organic item that comes into a building and every organic item that goes out, has to be recorded. Paperwork has to also show procedures carried out with the packing of the products, health & safety, cleaning procedures, product specifications … the list goes on. Sadly, being a 2.5-man family-run cottage industry (me, the husband and awesome help from our part-timer), we simply don't have the manpower or time to manage this huge administrative role.

It's no secret that some equine herbal supplement businesses advertise their products as 'organic', with some even copy/pasting the Soil Association's logo onto their websites (very against the rules!), when their products are very definitely not organic, nor are they as a company themselves registered as organic. We know of several ourselves and it's galling that these companies appear to be trading under the radar of Trading Standards.

They only come to light when someone reports them to Trading Standards, which interestingly is what happened to us back in 2014. This was back when I didn't know the rules, so was happily using the word 'organic' all over the website, until an embittered competitor (don't know who, although I had my suspicions, but this is all that Trading Standards would tell me) made a complaint about us. Nuff said on that one ...

However, that said, behind all this pain there are very good reasons for all this legislation, and it's all about you, our client. It's about protecting you and what you're buying into. Literally. So here's the How&Why of it all.

The Soil Association and 'Organic' Certification

Today, over 75% of agrichemicals are sold by just 4 global companies - they also bought out the seed industry, so these Big-4 control both the supply of seeds and the use of agrichemicals, completely dictating the direction that agriculture has taken. Sad to say more that yes, it's about global dominatin and all about profit, and not necessarily about producing ‘healthy’ food or maintaining farmers’ incomes.

Back in the day we were assured that these agrichemicals were safe. If they were safe then but they’re scientifically proven not safe now, how are we supposed to believe the government when they tell us that that it’s safe to use neonicotinoids? There’s no safe level for a nervous-system-disrupting insectide … a hormone-disrupting herbicide. Not for a bee, not for a carrot, not for a human. And certainly not for a horse.

Agreed, progress is vital - the mechanisation of farming, together with fertilisers and herbicides increasing crop yields, has made creating cheap food on a vast worldwide scale possible, on an intense-farming basis, while feeding livestock hormone treatment and antibiotics boosts growth and helps prevent disease (although I think you know my personal opinion on this. Nuff said ...).

These practices really got going after WWII, to the point that inexpensive food became the main driver in how our diets have changed. As the world’s population boomed, it made perfect sense and seemed safe/sensible. Compared to the pre-war healthy days of how our grandparents lived, shopped and ate, this became the new post-war modern-day 'normal'.

However, the good news is that there were still 'natural food' diehards out there. By the '70s a distinction between two types of farming systems began to become buzz words in the kitchen – mechanised ‘conventional’, and small-scale, chemical-free ‘organic’. Juicy UK subsidies were on the side of 'conventional', while smaller organic farms had the double-negative whammy of much smaller subsidies while having to shell out a fortune to certify themselves as ‘organic’.

For many years, organic farming and its farmers seemed to be on the back foot, sniped at as being ‘mung-bean hippies’, perceived as expensive and, as the rumour mill spread, a big ‘con’ - even my ancient dad's thrown this one at me!

In stepped the Soil Association*, who led a group of scientists, farmers and health professionals who were concerned about what was happening in the fields across Great Britain. They saw that while yields from conventional farming were high, therefore good to feed the growing population, the soil was in an increasingly poor state, food quality was decreasing, the well-being of livestock was compromised, and wildlife seemed to be in decline.

Their work became part of a worldwide push towards a better stewardship of the land, with standardised practices put in place to help make this happen - these eventually became Accreditation schemes. Since then, all 'organic' food and drink ensures:

• no synthetic chemicals
• no genetically modified seeds
• land/soil has been free from prohibited chemical inputs for a number of years (in the UK, usually 2)
• livestock are fed, housed and bred to specified high standards of animal welfare
• detailed written production and sales records are kept so there is an audit trail
• a strict physical separation of organic products from non-certified products
• regular on-site inspections

Why does it matter?

• A better chance for bees and wildlife to thrive - on average, plant, insect and bird life is 50% more abundant on organic farms. This biodiversity is important, not just because nature deserves it, but because wildlife includes both pollinating and pest-controlling insects, who are crucial to crops.

• Healthier soils - organic farmland soil is a great carbon sequester and teeming with micro-organisms, helping to combat climate change and prevent flooding/drought. Soils on conventional farms, routinely stripped of organic matter by years of chemical spraying, have now been recognised as being at a major disadvantage. 95% of our food comes directly or indirectly from our soils, never mind the fact that just 1-cm of topsoil can take up to 500 years to form, so this is a vital piece of the jigsaw.

• Fewer pesticides, and no artificial fertilisers or herbicides - there are around 300 pesticides available to non-organic farmers, while all but 20 (!) are banned in organic farming. Not surprisingly there are also fewer pesticide residues found on organic produce, with more traditional methods, such as companion planting and encouraging natural pest control, used first and foremost.

• No GM - organic certification is the only way you can guarantee a product as GM-free. GM continues to be controversial, such as the rise of herbicide-resistant superweeds, and the tendency of an industry dominated by wealthy corporations set to ruin subsistence farmers who become reliant on their seeds.

More of the good stuff

• Organic crops are up to 60% higher in a number of key antioxidants than their conventionally-grown equivalents. After years of dispute, this is now pretty much accepted by the scientific community.

• Organic farming protects pollinators, which are essential for food production. There is up to 50% more wildlife on organic farms. With bee and pollinator numbers decreasing at the rate they are, we need to move away from the current model which is a threat to the food system.

• There would be significant benefits for cleaner air, water, and improved biodiversity under an organic future.

And less of the bad …

Source: https://www.riverford.co.uk

• Organic fruit and veg contain lower concentrations of pesticides and the toxic heavy metal cadmium.

• Over a third of non-organic fruit and vegetables consumed in the UK contain a 'cocktail' of potentially dangerous pesticides, a new report has revealed. The report, named ‘The Cocktail Effect’ and published by the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) UK and the Soil Association, exposes how mixtures of pesticides commonly found in UK food, water and soil may be harming the health of both humans and wildlife.

• It found that some food items contain traces of up to 14 different pesticides, and listed evidence of pesticide cocktails in the environment, where up to ten different chemicals were found in samples of UK soil and water.

• Using government testing data, the report found that, in 2017, 87% of pears, 64% of apples and a quarter of bread contained pesticide cocktails.

• Over half of raspberries tested were found to contain multiple pesticides, with one sample containing four known probable or possible carcinogens, two endocrine disruptors which interfere with hormone systems, one developmental toxin which can have adverse effects on sexual function and fertility, and one neurotoxin which can negatively affect the nervous system and nerve tissue.

• Multiple residues were found in more than three-quarters of grapes tested in 2018, with one sample containing traces of fourteen different pesticides. (I love grapes, but simply can't bring myself to put a bag in my shopping trolley because they're so flipping toxic. But at least I can buy my beloved red wine as organic these days 😉)

• “Because of the overuse of pesticides in UK agriculture, we are constantly exposed to a wide array of different chemicals which can interact to become more toxic creating a ‘cocktail effect,” said Josie Cohen of PAN UK.

How can you trust that what you're buying has really come from an organic farm?

Good question. There are two types of organic licence - farmers and growers have producer licences, while people who turn these raw materials into other products (flour into bread, pigs into sausages etc) have a processor licence.

All Soil Association licensees are inspected annually to check audit trails (which ensure goods-in match goods-out), storage areas (to check non-organic and organic goods can’t get cross-contaminated), labelling and merchandising etc. Remember that paperwork trail I mentioned in the intro?

Understandably, it’s really strict. Here's a real-life example - a food company called Better Brand sells several products under their own Better Food brand. These products are organically grown from certified growers (i.e. their Italian passata and olive oil, Sicilian orange and Priors Grove apple juice) but because the facilities they are sent to for processing aren’t certified (because they’re doing it on such a small scale and remember, it costs a bomb to get certified), they can’t sell them as 'organic', or even mention the word on any labels or signage associated with the product.

Since the uncertified processor sites break the chain of organic custody, Better Brand can’t produce an unbroken audit trail so they can’t 100% guarantee the products are made from organic produce (even though they are).

If they break the rules? Better Brand are scrutinised, audited, held to account, and ultimately banned from trading. This is why you can trust the logo - the logo is the seal of approval that all these checks and balances have been followed. This is also why 'organic' might cost a bit more.

You’ll also find that organic supply chains tend to be less exploitative than some conventional routes - going to all this extra effort costs more, so this is reflected in the price. This isn’t me trying to justify why our herbs may be more expensive than purveyors of non-organic herbs (although there are some non-organic herb sellers out there who are more expensive than us!) - I'm just acknowledging as transparently as I can why this is the case.

On the other side, as oil and petrochemicals get more expensive, as soil erosion and other environmental factors become a cost to businesses, I'm quietly confident that the cost of conventionally produced products will become more in line with organic prices. You could argue (I often do) that it isn’t that organic food is expensive, it’s that industrialised food is cheap. It’s unrealistic to think we can rampage on in the old ways, polluting and exploiting our limited resources.

And lest we forget, if we factor in the benefits to health, it's more a case of not what it costs, but what it's worth 😉

The all-important certification

These are Organic Herb Trading Co's certificates that are behind every one of our herbs and herbal blends. Click here to view OHT's website page with the links to view each certificate:

• Soil Association organic trading schedule - Listing OHT's products certified to both Soil Association and EU organic standards for food & drink products
• Soil Association organic certificate - Confirming certification to both Soil Association and EU organic standards for food & drink products.
• BRC certificate - Confirming grade AA certification to the British Retail Consortium food safety standard issue 7.
• COSMOS certificate of registration - Confirming certification to the COSMOS Organic international standard for organic cosmetics and cosmetic ingredients.
• COSMOS trading schedule - Listing OHT's products certified to the COSMOS Organic international standard for organic cosmetics and cosmetic ingredients.
• Fair for Life Social & Fair Trade certificate - Confirming certification for the Fair for Life Social and Fair Trade Programme.
• Fairtrade certificate - Confirming certification to the Fairtrade standards.
• Demeter organic & biodynamic certification for the herb field - Confirming certification for OHT's herb field to the Demeter standards for organic & biodynamic growing (NB - OHT grow many of our herbs especially for us).
• BDA organic & biodynamic certification for processing - Confirming certification by the BDA for organic (EU regulation) & biodynamic (Demeter standard) products.
• NOP organic certificate and schedule - Confirming certification to the USDA's NOP (National Organic Program).
• Fairwild certificate - Registered distributor for Fairwild certified products.

* The Soil Association is a charity based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1946, it has over 27,000 members today. Its activities include campaign work on issues including opposition to intensive farming, support for local purchasing and public education on nutrition; as well the certification of organic food.