Certification process
The certification procedure has four steps:
- Application, including description of the project
- On-site audit, delivering a comprehensive audit report
- Evaluation of this report, including information received from third parties
- Certification, including potential conditions for improvement
Certification is based on:
- Resource assessment
- Management plan
- Sustainable collecting practices
- Cost calculation along the supply chain
- Traceability of goods and finances
- Documented fair trading practices
No producer organization can become certified without an on-site inspection. As most have hundreds of collectors, not all can be individually visited. Therefore, the purchasing company and collectors are certified as a group, and need to have an internal quality assurance system.
A full FairWild audit (ecological and social criteria) normally takes 2-3 days. The time needed depends on the size of the company, its complexity, and the number and type of certified products it is seeking to sell. The costs of certification depend on the number of working days required. After they receive their initial FairWild certification, companies are inspected on-site on an annual basis. Third party qualified agencies are eligible to conduct such inspections, which may be combined with other auditing systems.
To determine the license fees to the FairWild Foundation, buyers in the market place fill out a declaration form, stipulating the relationship and prices paid to the producing companies. Traders report on all products sold during one year.
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