Maintaining high welfare status and allowing birds access to natural behaviour and outdoors are particular challenges in organic egg production. Feather pecking, foot problems, external parasites and poor utilisation of outdoor areas have been recognised as problems in organic layer systems (Lampkin 1997, Berg 2001, Kjilstra et al. 2003). Inexperience might cause imbalances in feed rationing due to the absence of synthetic amino acids and use of home-grown feed (Gordon and Clarke 2002, Zollitsch and Baumung 2004). Furthermore, birds in free range systems have potentially greater exposure to bird or human pathogens than birds in systems with no outdoor access. Good stockmanship and experience in free range systems have been identified as keys to high welfare status in organic poultry systems (Bestman 2001). Thus, organic egg production poses major challenges for producers in countries like Finland, where free range egg production is not common; where climatic conditions limit both outdoor access and building design; and where biosecurity and exclusion of zoonotic pathogens from the food chain has been one of the main aims of conventional egg production.  One of the main objectives of the current study was to identify risk factors for potential problems in animal welfare and food safety on organic layer flocks in Finland. In addition, the aim was to establish potential solutions, suitable for Finnish conditions, to identified risks. In this presentation, the core findings of the descriptive statistics concerning management traits of the farms, their pastures and outside access for the hens, factors affecting health control on the farms, laboratory results of the faecal samples as well as post mortem results will be presented. The results (e.g. prevalence of cannibalism, red mites and campylobacters and absence of salmonella) will be compared to other studies in other countries and to the general disease status of non organi c egg production in Finland.