Scandals, new legislation, GMOs... EuroparlTV investigates the organic food industry to find out if European consumers really know what is on their plates.

Reporter: Are you sure it's organic?

In spite of the crisis, the organic market  is still growing in Europe.

The reform of the CAP post-2013  aims to guarantee Europeans

healthy, good-quality food  that respects the environment.

We should widen greening  and make it an optional menu.

and that we must reintroduce crop rotation  in the CAP greening debate.

Aid must be granted to farmers,  but ecologically.

Jean-François Noel  is proud of his business.

He's in charge of a cooperative of 27  producers of organic poultry in Belgium.

On this farm, no less than  4,800 organic chickens are reared.

which specify a density inside the chicken  shed of 10 chickens per square metre.

They also specify an outdoor area of  at least four square metres per chicken.

So for the 4,800 chickens  we have inside here,

which is the maximum number per shed  as well as the density per square metre,

In addition, the feed  obviously has to be organic.

The farm is relatively small.  It's a long way from industrial chicken sheds

But if the rosy picture the consumer has  of organic produce is dented,

Jean-François is keen  to set the record straight.

It's not possible to live  by rearing 200 chickens on your own,

It's not possible because  there are no economies of scale.

Regulations no longer contain links  to the soil, to the dismay of purists.

Farmers used to be obliged to produce  at least 40% of chicken feed,

but from 2009 new regulations  changed the situation.

Producers can buy in their poultry feed  from outside the farm,

even from outside the Union,  on condition that it's organic.

For what we can't find here, we have  agreements with an Italian cooperative.

We work directly  with a cooperative that we know

and I think that's also a plus  for the quality of our products.

We're not opportunistic. We don't  look for the cheapest raw materials.

Certification throughout  the production chain is crucial

to be sure of the organic quality  of products put on sale.

He's an inspector for a certification body.

He goes through the purchase orders  for the raw materials present on the farm.

If we have doubts about this animal feed,  we can always take a sample.

We can take as many samples  as we want.

and they can see  in a very rational, scientific way

if there are any pesticides,  fungicides or other products

which are not allowed  in organic agriculture.

But certain scandals have highlighted  the poor controls in some EU countries.

In 2011 the Italian police broke up  a ring supplying fake organic products

for a value in excess of 220 million euros.

Does the new European label  introduced in July 2010

guarantee something as 100% organic?  The answer is no.

containing at least 95% of ingredients  from organic agriculture.

It also allows the accidental presence  of GMOs up to 0.9%.

Consumers are often unaware  of these points.

In Paris we meet Claude Gruffat,  a longtime player in organics in France.

and take into account environmental  or even social aspects,

such as workers' welfare,  as other labels already do.

What didn't you like in this legislation?

What we didn't like, for example,  was to do with the link to the soil.

The production of raw materials for  animal feed had disappeared off the map.

We thought that was  an important thing to keep.

There are questions about  the surface area of buildings for animals

which were modified, often  lowering them rather than raising them.

There's stuff about  times of production in the year,

which doesn't connect with important  questions for us, like seasonality.

As for Jean-François,  our farming cooperative head,

he hopes to be able  to diversify his activity.

He wants to go into production of turkeys  for Christmas and the New Year.