Privacy policy

The protection of your personal data is very important to us. We therefore ask you to read the following privacy policy carefully.

The purpose of this policy is to inform you about the reason for and extent to which your personal data will be processed when you visit our website. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact the controller.

This website uses SSL or TLS encryption to protect the transmission of personal data and other confidential content (e.g. orders or inquiries to the controller). You can recognize an encrypted connection by the character string "https://" and the lock symbol in your browser line.

(1) Controller within the meaning of Art. 4 No. 7 General Data Protection Regulation (hereinafter: “GDPR”) is:

Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL)
Ackerstrasse 113
5070 Frick
Switzerland
Telephone +41 62 8657-272
Fax +41 62 8657-273
info.suisse(at)fibl.org

(2) Contact details regarding questions on privacy and data protection at FiBL:
dataprotection(at)fibl.org

(1) According to the applicable laws, you have various rights regarding your personal data:

• Right to obtain confirmation and access
• Right to request rectification
• Right to erasure ('right to be forgotten')
• Right to request restriction of processing
• Right to data portability
• Right to object
• Right to withdraw the given consent

If you wish to assert these rights, please send your request by e-mail or by post to the address mentioned above.

(2) You also have the right of lodging a complaint with a supervisory authority about the processing of your personal data with us.

(1) When using our website for information purposes only, i.e. if you do not register or otherwise provide us with information, we only collect the personal data that your browser transmits to our server (so-called "server log files"). If you want to visit our website, we collect the following information that is technically necessary for us to display our website and to ensure the stability, functionality and security of our website:

• our visited website
• used IP address
• date and time of access
• Time zone difference to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
• Access status / HTTP status code
• the amount of data transferred in bytes
• Website from which you accessed the site (source/reference)
• used browser
• the operating system used and its interface
• Language and version of the browser software.

(2) The legal basis is our legitimate interest in ensuring a smooth connection setup and a comfortable use of the website as well as in the possibility to evaluate system security and stability and to pursue further administrative purposes in accordance with Art. 6 Para. 1 S. 1 lit. f GDPR.

(3) The data will not be passed on or used in any other way.

(1) Like many other websites, we also use so-called "cookies". Cookies are small text files stored on your hard drive and associated with the browser you are using, and through which certain information flows to the entity that sets the cookie. When a user accesses a website, a cookie may be stored on the user's operating system. This cookie contains a characteristic string of characters that enables the browser to be uniquely identified when the website is called up again. Cookies cannot execute programs or transmit viruses to your computer. They are used to make the website more user-friendly and effective and enable the use of certain functions.

(2) Our website only uses technically necessary cookies that guarantee the core functionality of our website. Some website functions cannot be offered without the use of cookies. For these, the browser must be recognised even after a page change. The user data collected through technically necessary cookies are not used to create user profiles. These purposes are also our legitimate interest in processing the personal data according to Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f DSGVO.

Below you will find a list of the cookies that are set on our website:

(3) We integrate external content from third-party providers on our website. In this case, we explicitly point this out to you and obtain your consent in accordance with Art. 6 para. 1 lit. a DS-GVO before you can activate the external content. The third-party providers may set cookies. For further information, please refer to the respective section on the corresponding third-party provider in this privacy policy.

(1) In addition to the purely informational use of our website, we offer various services which you can use if you are interested. For this purpose, you must generally provide further personal data, which we use to perform the respective service and to which the aforementioned data processing principles apply. In some cases we use external service providers to process your data. These have been carefully selected and commissioned by us, are bound by our instructions and are regularly checked.

(2) Furthermore, we will inform you in the respective offer about a transfer of your data outside the European Union (EU) or the European Economic Area (EEA). If the level of data protection in a country in which the data is processed does not comply with the applicable data protection regulations, we will contractually ensure that the protection of your personal data is equivalent to that in Switzerland or the EU/EEA at all times, for example by incorporating the EU standard contractual clauses.

(1)    If you send us enquiries via e-mail, your data will be stored for the purpose of answering the enquiry and in the event of follow-up questions. You will be required to provide your name and e-mail address. Providing a telephone number and other data is voluntary and serves to facilitate contact and to enable us to address you personally. These data are stored and used solely for the purpose of responding to your request or for establishing contact and the technical administration. The legal basis for processing the data is our legitimate interest in responding to your request in accordance with Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f GDPR.

(2) Your data will be deleted when your inquiry has been finally clarified and if no statutory retention obligations oppose this.

(1) We use the "Google Maps" component of Google Inc. (1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA) or, if you have your habitual residence in the EU/EEA or Switzerland, Google Ireland Limited (Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland, hereinafter "Google"), to visually display geographical information. By visiting the website, Google receives the information that you have accessed the corresponding sub-page of our website. In addition, the following technically necessary data is transmitted: Name and URL of the retrieved file, date and time of the retrieval, amount of data transferred, notification of successful retrieval (HTTP response code), browser type and version, operating system, referrer URL (i.e. the previously visited page), IP address and the requesting provider. This takes place regardless of whether Google provides a user account in which you are logged in or whether no user account exists.

(2) When you activate the content of Google Maps on our website, a connection to Google's servers is established. This tells the Google server which of our pages you have visited. If you are logged into your Google account, you enable Google to assign your surfing behaviour directly to your personal profile. You can prevent this by logging out of your Google account. Furthermore, Google may store various cookies on your terminal device after starting Google Maps. With the help of these cookies, Google can obtain information about visitors to this website. This information is used, among other things, to collect statistics, improve the user experience and prevent fraud attempts. The cookies remain on your terminal device until you delete them. If necessary, further data processing operations may be triggered after the start of Google Maps, over which we have no influence.

(3) Data processing is carried out based on Art. 6 para. 1 lit. a DSGVO in the context of activating the content of Google Maps. This consent must be given again with each new website visit.

(4) For more information, please see Google's privacy policy at https://policies.google.com/privacy. Information on Google's privacy settings can be found at https://safety.google/privacy/privacy-controls/. You can view Google's terms of use at http://www.google.de/intl/de/policies/terms/regional.html, and the additional terms of use for Google Maps can be found at https://www.google.com/intl/de_US/help/terms_maps.html.

(5) If you do not agree to the future transmission of your data to Google in the context of the use of Google Maps, you also have the option of completely deactivating the Google Maps web service by switching off the JavaScript application in your browser. Google Maps and thus also the map display on this website can not be used. If JavaScript is deactivated, other website functions may also no longer work.

(1) We use services of etracker GmbH (Erste Brunnenstraße 1, 2045 Hamburg, Germany, hereinafter: etracker) to analyse usage data. We do not use cookies for web analysis. Only website data from web servers are used, as well as certain information that the web browser transmits to the web server for the retrieval of web pages. This information makes it possible to link individual page views and interactions into coherent sessions. Encryption, together with a timestamp, prevents creating or linking user profiles. Due to the small number of information elements and the explicit time limit, it is impossible that an individual person can be linked and thus identified or made identifiable. Furthermore, the information is not made accessible to third parties, and the hash procedure used and the individual information are not disclosed. Also, etracker Analytics is not used for the "purpose of processing for the provision of personalised content and advertising, i.e. for direct communication with a specific person", but for the aggregated statistical evaluation of website usage.

(2) The data generated with etracker is processed and stored on our behalf by etracker exclusively in Germany and is therefore subject to the strict German and European data protection laws and standards. Etracker has been independently audited, certified and awarded a data protection seal of approval in this regard.

(3) The data processing is carried out on the basis of the legal provisions of Art. 6 para. 1 lit. f (legitimate interest) of the General Data Protection Regulation (DSGVO). Our concern in terms of the DSGVO (legitimate interest) is the optimisation of our online offer and our web presence. Since the privacy of our visitors is important to us, data that may allow a reference to an individual person, such as the IP address, is anonymised or pseudonymised as soon as possible. We do not use the data in any other way, combine it with other data or pass it on to third parties.

(4) You can object to the above-described data processing for analysis purposes (without personal reference) at any time. The objection has no adverse consequences.
In this case, a so-called opt-out cookie will be stored in your browser, which means that etracker will not collect any session data. Please note that if you delete your cookies completely, the opt-out cookie will also be deleted, and you may have to reactivate it. If you object to the data processing, the following cookie will be set:

(1) If you have consented to the processing of your data, it is possible at any time to withdraw this processing for the future. As a result, your data will no longer be processed for the agreed purpose.

(2) If your data are processed on the basis of a weighing of interests in accordance with the legal basis Art. 6 para. 1 sentence 1 lit. e or f GDPR, you can object to this if you have special reasons against processing the data.

(3) You also have the possibility to object to the processing of your data for the purpose of direct marketing. Thus, your data will no longer be processed for the purpose of direct advertising.