Certification Body Accreditation

FSC does not issue certificates itself. Independent certification bodies carry out the forest management and chain of custody assessments that lead to FSC certification. The certification bodies are held to account by Assurance Services International.

FSC Certification Body Accreditation
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How does it work?

FSC sets the standards for forest management and chain of custody certification, and defines the procedures that certification bodies should follow in their certification assessments.

The following resources are relevant:

FSC-STD-20-001 General requirements for FSC accredited certification bodies

FSC-STD-20-007 Forest management evaluations

FSC-STD-20-011 Chain of Custody Evaluations

Accredited certification bodies are checked regularly to make sure they operate in line with our rules.

FSC is the only global forest certification system to have an integrated accreditation programme that systematically checks its certification bodies.

Assurance Services International (ASI) is responsible for checking certification body compliance with our rules and procedures through a combination of field and office audits. All FSC-accredited certification bodies must meet FSC accreditation requirements.

In the same way that certification bodies carry out annual checks on holders of FSC forest management and chain of custody certificates, so ASI carries out annual checks on the certification bodies, through office and field audits.

Past and upcoming accreditation assessments can be seen on the ASI website.

Document Centre

From policies, to national standards, to controlled wood risk assessments, the most up-to-date versions of documents from our normative framework can be found here in the FSC document centre.

Disclaimer

Responsible for the content: FSC International Center gGmbH

Legally represented by: Managing Directors, Dr. Hans-Joachim Droste and Mr. Stefan Salvador

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