Incorporated into the draft standard is four sections of the FSC-STD-20-011 V4-0 Chain of Custody Evaluations draft standard related to verification requirements for certification bodies. This section describes the rules that certification bodies must abide by when conducting an audit, and can be reviewed at the same time as the draft FSC-STD-40-004 V3-0.
To better assist our stakeholders, we’ll be using a web-based consultation platform to collect feedback. The two documents are open for public consultation from 15 June to 31 August 2016.
There are five main proposed changes in the revised draft of the FSC-STD-40-004 V3-0 Chain of Custody Certification standard detailed below.
- New transaction verification requirements are proposed that would allow certification bodies to verify FSC transactions between certificate holders. It is suggested that certificate holders would go through a risk assessment that will classify them as being part of either high-risk or low-risk supply chains. Those with a high-risk classification will be required to use the FSC Online Claims Platform (OCP), but for the majority of certificate holders, who would be classified as low-risk, the use of the OCP would be optional – although still recommended.
- A change to multi-site rules that allow multi-site certificate holders to share a) credit accounts and, b) percentage calculations across several sites.
- Refined credit system requirements, including clarifying credit accounting for assembled wood products, and an extension of the credit accounting period from 12 to 24 months.
- Reduce the threshold for FSC-labelled recycled wood products from 85 per cent to 70 per cent (same threshold as required for FSC Mix products).
- A merger of advice notes and standard interpretations will be incorporated into the standard.
For any questions, please contact project coordinator, Lucia Massaroth (l.massaroth@fsc.org).