Consultation on FSC’s accreditation standards open

Consultation on revision of FSC's General Accreditation Standard, Certification Transfer Procedure and Procedure for Auditor Training Programme is open from 23 September 2024 to 21 November 2024 for your input.

FSC is revising the general accreditation standard FSC-STD-20-001 V4-0 General Requirements for FSC Accredited Certification Bodies. The standard ensures that FSC certifications are managed in a competent, consistent, impartial, transparent, rigorous, reliable and credible manner. The standard is revised together with two related procedures FSC-PRO-20-003 Transfer of FSC Certificates and License Agreements and FSC-PRO-20-004 General Requirements for FSC Training Programme. Please access the process page here to learn more about this joint revision. 

As part of the drafting phase, FSC is conducting a public consultation on the drafts for three documents (please note that FSC-PRO-20-003 is included as an Annex 6 to FSC-STD-20-001 V5-0 D2-0).

Key changes

The following is an overview of the key changes:

1. Changes triggered by EC regulation 765/2008:

• Obtaining and maintaining accreditation as per ASI Two-Tier Assurance Program.
• ISO 17065 as basis for accreditation.

Why it matters: FSC introduced the process for accreditation and the conformity with ISO 17065 as mandatory accreditation requirement.

2. Alignment with ISO 17065

Why it matters: FSC has aligned its certification body standard with ISO 17065 and this alignment led to the changes in closure of nonconformity timelines, timeline for making certification decision and granting and maintaining certification if the nonconformities are addressed.

3. Proposal to introduce risk-based approaches to auditing.

Why it matters: Risk-based approach to apply additional evaluation measures in case of high integrity risk is added. 

4. Changes to the related procedures include provision for online trainings for auditor candidates and clarification to the transfer of certification from one certification body to other.

Why it matters: FSC introduced the provision of online trainings for auditor candidates for chain of custody and forest management trainings the in-person component is kept as mandatory. In terms of transfer of certification, process for voluntary and non-voluntary transfers is clarified. 

Webinars

FSC will be conducting webinars to present the draft documents and to discuss the key changes. Please register below for the webinars. We are targeting to have webinars for more general users (Option 1&2) and targeted webinars for our technical and expert users such as our certification bodies (Option 3&4) so please sign up accordingly.

Option 1: Consultation webinar on FSC accreditation standards revision

• Wednesday, 16 October 9:00 – 10:30 am CET with Spanish and French interpretation. Register here.
• Target: Network partners, FSC members, FSC staff and others

Option 2 (session repeated): Consultation webinar on FSC accreditation standards revision

• Wednesday, 16 October 16:00 – 17:30 CET with Spanish and French interpretation. Register here.
• Target audience: FSC Network Partners, FSC members, FSC staff and others

Option 3: Consultation webinar on FSC accreditation standards revision for technical users

• Thursday, 07 November 2024 at 9:00 – 10:30 CET in English only.  Register here.
• Target audience: Certification bodies and ASI.

Option 4 (session repeated): Consultation webinar on FSC accreditation standards revision for technical users

• Thursday, 07 November 2024 at 16:00 – 17:30 CET in English only.  Register here.
• Target audience: Certification bodies and ASI.

Participate today

To access the consultation, please click for English, Spanish and French. The consultation is open until 21 November 2024. We are looking forward to your participation!