The objective of the revision is to review and streamline the FSC trademark use requirements for certificate holders to enhance and ease labelling and promotion of products. It also aims to address Motions 29 and 36 passed at the General Assembly in 2014.
Taking the holiday season into account, we will extend the consultation duration for two weeks to allow stakeholders enough time to provide their feedback. The consultation will now end on 31 January 2016. You will find all necessary information about the revision processes and the needed documents for this public consultation via the Setting Standard page.
In a nutshell, the revised standard will have the following main amendments:
- Suggestions for on-product labels in a separate discussion paper proposing either changing Mix label text or moving into one generic label for all on product claims;
- Introduction of possibility for self-approval of FSC trademark use;
- Integration of advice notes on small and community label option (FSC-ADV-50-003) and on Forest For All Forever trademarks (FSC-ADV-50-004);
- Removal of very specific prohibitions, such as general promotion if no FSC sales or production take place for 12 months, use of trademarks on top of documents and all trademark use on business cards;
- Introduction of restriction on general promotion on invoice and delivery documents;
- Allowing labeling with minimum elements as default, labeling with full elements being optional;
- Reducing minimum size requirements for on product labels.
There will be also a crosswalk document, which will ease your review and provides a bigger picture of all changes in greater detail by explaining clause by clause differences between the draft and the existing requirements. Please submit your comments on both the draft and the discussion paper by using the comment form. All documents provided are in English.
In order to support stakeholders’ participation in the consultation and to facilitate the review process as whole, FSC is also going to invite interested stakeholders for online webinars. The proposed dates for the webinars will be published on the same page above. You can easily register yourself by following the link published by then.
We kindly invite and encourage you to join the consultation. Your valuable feedback and constant support is very much appreciated, and will help us to shape the standard for the best results.
As always, should you have any questions, please feel free to reach us via trademark@fsc.org at any time.