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Monday, 04 March 2013
Public Consultation for Chain of Custody Certification of Multiple Sites

March 4, 2013

The draft standard for Chain of Custody certification of multiple sites, FSC-STD-40-003 V2-0 is now available for the second round of public consultation. This standard is a proposed move to simplify the FSC CoC system by merging the FSC policy for group certification and the FSC standard for multi-site certification.The comment period is open until April 2nd, 2013. Please follow the links below for the draft standard, the comment form, and the responses from FSC after the first consultation period.

Please provide your comments by using the comment form in the link above and send your completed comments by April 2nd, 2013, to Dorothee Jung at d.jung at fsc point org. Please take note of the following changes (The number before each bullet below corresponds to the related section in the draft standard).

  • Further clarification and description about the responsibilities of the Central Office
  • 4.5 Note - Clarifies that the Central Office may be exempt from performing annual audits on the certificate's Participating Sites, as long as their Certification Body conducts annual audits on all of the Participating Sites.
  • 5.1.4 - Includes the direction that the Certificate Manager and Central Office's auditors for both Multi-sites and Group certificates with more than 20 Participating Sites, shall be trained to conduct audits in accordance with ISO 19011: Guidelines for auditing management systems.
  • 5.1.6b - Creates the new requirement that the Central Office creates a list of all Participating Sites, with contact information (name, phone number, email address, physical address), appointed Certificate Manager, date of entry into the Multi-site or Group certificate, date of withdrawal from the scope of the certificate and the certificate sub-code assigned.
  • Further guidance on managing the number of participating the sites in a certificate
  • 5.4.1.1 - Establishes a new maximum limit of 500 members per Group CoC certificate.
  • 5.4.6 - Provides direction for handling the situation where a member of a Group CoC certificate stops complying with the eligibility requirements (In the US, this will apply to Group Members who move above the $5 Million threshold for eligibility in a group certificate). If this happens, the member's status will be considered 'transitional' and the member will have two consecutive years before they will have to leave the group.
  • Added Participating Site requirements
  • 6.2 - Establishes the requirement that during the sale of FSC certified products, each multi-site or group member will need to use their assigned sub-codes on the sales documentation.

For questions, please contact Lori Knosalla at l.knosalla at us.fsc point org.