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Dovetail Report: May 2005 Chain-of-Custody Certification: What is It, Why do It, and How? Dr. Jeff Howe To request a hardcopy, please call or email for ordering information. The full text of this report is available in Adobe PDF format (496 kb) . Summary Most certification systems are designed to operate as market-based incentive programs that hope to attract customers by communicating something about production processes or the origins of the raw materials in the certified product. Whether it is food produced without synthetic chemicals or paper from recycled fiber, eco-labels try to tell a story. A critical role of certification systems is to assure customers that the story is true. The verification of the story is the role of the chain-of-custody (COC) certification process. This process, its basic components, and its benefits are the topics addressed in this paper. Introduction In forest certification and many other quality assurance programs, there are generally two types of certification. One certification process is applied to the producer, through evaluation of forestland management operations in the case of forest certification or farm operations in the case of organic certifications. This process involves evaluating procedures and practices associated with growing, managing, and producing the raw material. The second type of certification is the process applied to auditing manufacturers, processors and others along the value chain. This second process is often called chain-of-custody (COC) certification. As an interesting aside, the term chain-of-custody has history as police terminology, where it means a “process used to maintain and document the chronological history of the evidence” [1] . The basic concept of COC is a system that assures end consumers that the products they buy can be traced back to a certified source. In some situations the product verification trail is relatively short, for example from green lumber at a local sawmill using logs from a local certified forest. However, in an increasingly global market of highly processed products, the chain-of-custody can become quite complex. [1] http://peace-officers.com/content/glossary/def-chain.shtml Download the full text of this report. (PDF) Jeff has a B.S. degree in Biology from Bates College, a M.S. degree in Forest Products Marketing from the University of Maine, and a PhD in Marketing from the University of Minnesota. |
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