1. In accordance with Article 3 of the Enforcement Rules of  the  Agricultural Production and Certification Act, the Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan (hereinafter referred to as COA) stipulates this guideline for visiting import organic agricultural product equivalence country verification operation.

2.COA shall conduct on-site verification once one of the following circumstances happens:

（1）Base on the information offered by the country (hereinafter referred to as applicant country) requesting on the list of organic equivalence country to COA, if the import organic agricultural product and organic agricultural processed product equivalence review panel (hereinafter referred to as review panel) considers it is necessary to conduct on-site verification, COA shall contact applicant country or the representative office in Taiwan to coordinate with on-site verification.

（2）Once the announced organic equivalence country (hereinafter referred   to as announced country) is found not effectively implementing organic management system, base on the collected information, COA shall inform the announced country or the representative office in Taiwan to coordinate with on-site verification.

3.COA shall organize a verification team while conducting aforementioned on-site verification. The members of the evaluation team shall be composed of suitable persons designated by COA, and at least one representative from each specific assessment body, review panel, related professional and scholar to  conduct on-site verification.

           The aforementioned specific assessment body is an agent which has been approved by COA according to the Operating Guidelines for Accreditation of Organic Agricultural Product Certification Bodies.

4.The evaluation team shall verify the following objects:

（1）Accreditation system: Verify local accreditation bodies or specific  conformity assessment bodies

（2）Certification system: Verify headquarter assessment two Certification  bodies in principle. Increasing or decreasing the number of Certification bodies depends on the real circumstance if  necessary

（3）The operator of organic agricultural product and organic agricultural processed product: Verify (witness assessment) two organic agricultural product operators which have been approved by Certification bodies. Increasing or decreasing the number of operators depends on the circumstance if necessary.

5.The evaluation team shall verify the following events:

（1）To verify the Accreditation and certification implementation of the applicant country or announced country according to organic related rules and technical regulations.

（2）To verify the documents of implementation on organic management rules, technical regulations 、 ISO/IEC Guide 65：1996， General requirements for bodies operating product certification systems、IAF GD 5:2006 Guidance on ISO/IEC Guide 65:1996

6.While visiting the applicant or announced country, the schedule which needs to be reviewed by Republic of China for evaluation team shall be arranged by the applicant or announced country. During visiting, the applicant or announced country should pay for the transportation. The government of Republic of China will cover the rest expenses, which includes airfare, living expense and so on.

7.The applicant or announced country should assign a representative to escort the evaluation team members from arriving and seeing off at the airport to verifying local accreditation bodies and certification bodies, in order to guarantee the smooth of the verification operation and the secure of the team members.

8.Chinese is requested to perform the verification. The applicant or announced country should prepare related documentation and make a presentation to the evaluation team on the first day of their arrival (the accreditation and assessment report of local accreditation bodies or specific conformity assessment bodies). If the presentation is made in English, a Chinese interpreter is requested. If the country is not English speaking country, an interpreter to translate all the communication in Chinese is requested during on-site verification