It has become a bit tedious, and more than a little embarrassing, to follow the long, long, long path that FSC-US continues to follow in its quest to finalize a National Risk Assessment for the United States.  The community received another update late last night, and we feel duty-bound to share it with our readers. The latest update came in the usual format:  an email from FSC-US's policy director.  We have attached a copy of the email for those of you who aren't on the mailing list.  The...

In our New Year’s post, we used a photo of a hamburger container collected recently from a nearby MacDonald’s restaurant.  Our point was simply to demonstrate the continuing relevant of certified products in the commodity marketplace - and by extension the ongoing relevance of the FSC, SFI and PEFC brands.  MacDonald’s buys a lot of burger boxes, so the fact that they have FSC labels on them is - by definition - a pretty big deal. Because we are interested in the details of this sort of thing,...

Our post from just before the New Year shared some important information updates on the status of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) Controlled Wood program in the US.  Our intent, of course, was simply to share and summarize the latest information available on this important topic.   One of the hazards of sharing up-to-date information in a timely way is that things like this have a tendency to change.  And that's just what happened here.  We got a friendly note from FSC-US staff on...

It is both traditional and healthy to take advantage of this quiet time of the year to do a bit of reflection.   2018 was an active and interesting year for us and also for many of our clients.  We can say the same for the programs we follow so closely.  FSC and SFI continue to grow and thrive - sometimes in spite of their best efforts at self-destruction.  We’ll have more to say soon on that subject.  For now, however, we would like to share a handful of general observations and reflections;...

This post is to provide a quick update for the many folks who are following the ongoing drama of the FSC Controlled Wood program, and specifically the many companies who have implemented the latest version of FSC-STD-40-005 and are facing the end-of-year deadline for approval of the US National Risk Assessment (US-NRA).   For companies who chose not to transition, and remain certified to the “old” version 2-1 of the Controlled Wood standard, nothing has changed.  Any remaining v.2-1...

The US affiliate of the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC-US) released the latest version of its Controlled Wood National Risk Assessment (NRA) for the United States just before the Christmas holidays, we wasted no time in calling attention to it with our brief posting on December 16.  This document is very important to the whole FSC program, for reasons that we have discussed at length before, and surely will again.  As is typical with FSC, the NRA document had been in the works for a very long...