Standards
Standards, schemes & conformity
A standard is a published document issued by a named body, in a named edition, applying in a named jurisdiction, either because the law requires it or because someone chose to adopt it. This section summarises what those documents cover and how conformity to them is assessed.
A scheme is a standard plus assurance
Certification schemes are documented here alongside standards rather than separately, because a scheme is a standard with a conformity-assessment mechanism attached. It has the same issuing body, the same versioning, and the same copyright constraints. What distinguishes it is the answer to two further questions: how conformity is assessed, and who assesses it. Every entry states both when they are established.
Meeting a standard is not the same as being good, and certification is not a guarantee about a particular lot. A scheme attests that an audit against a set of requirements was passed at a point in time, by whoever was audited. Reading it as a claim about the consignment in front of you is the most common mistake this section exists to prevent.
Domain standards here, grade standards there
A document scoped to one commodity’s grades belongs with that commodity: those live under grading standards. This section holds standards scoped to a domain across commodities — food safety, plant health, animal health, sustainability, organic, social and labour, traceability, management systems, measurement. The split is enforced rather than trusted, so the two sections never answer the same question. Standards that bear on trade mechanics link to the concepts they govern.
Editions, not names
Requirements change between editions, and a scheme name without a version is not a fact about anything. Every entry names the edition its summary reflects, and says so when a later edition supersedes it.
What these pages are not
This is a summary of what the standard or scheme covers and how conformity is assessed, prepared from public scope documents. It is not the standard, does not reproduce its requirements, and confers no certification, accreditation, or recognition. AgricultureID is not a certification body, accreditation body, or scheme owner. Requirements are versioned and change — work from the edition the scheme names.
Standards & schemes A–Z
Each entry covers the issuing body, edition, jurisdiction, legal status, what the standard covers, how conformity is assessed and by whom, the commodities in scope, and the limits of a summary.
25 entries
- Conformity assessment
Accreditation and Certification Bodies
Certification bodies assess producers; accreditation bodies assess certification bodies. The distinction is not bureaucratic decoration — it exists because whoever pays the auditor has an interest in the answer, and accreditation is the structural response to that problem.
- Certification scheme
Chain of Custody Certification
Chain of custody certification governs how a claim survives the journey from a certified farm to a finished product. Its models — identity preserved, segregated, mass balance, and book and claim — differ enormously in what they actually assert, and the difference is where most consumer misunderstanding of sustainability labels originates.
- Standard
Codex Alimentarius
Codex Alimentarius is the joint FAO/WHO collection of international food standards, codes of practice, and guidelines. It binds nobody by itself — yet because the WTO SPS Agreement names it as the international benchmark for food safety, it is voluntary in form and consequential in effect.
- Standard
Codex General Principles of Food Hygiene
The Codex General Principles of Food Hygiene is the foundational international code of practice for controlling food hazards along the chain. It sets out good hygiene practices as the base layer, with HACCP built on top — and it is a code of practice, not a certifiable standard.
- Standard
Codex Maximum Residue Limits
Codex maximum residue limits are internationally adopted limits for pesticide and veterinary drug residues in specific commodities. They are the international reference under the WTO SPS Agreement — but national MRLs frequently differ from them, and it is the importing country’s limit that decides a consignment.
- Regulatory framework
EU Organic Regulation
The EU organic regulation is the law defining organic production and labelling in the European Union. It is not a voluntary scheme: within the EU it is binding, the organic term is legally protected, and certification by an approved control body is a precondition for using it.
- Certification scheme
Fairtrade Standards
Fairtrade standards are a voluntary certification scheme addressing trading terms and producer organisation as much as production practice. What distinguishes them from every other scheme here is that they set conditions on the buyer — including price — rather than only on the farm.
- Certification scheme
GLOBALG.A.P. Integrated Farm Assurance
Integrated Farm Assurance is GLOBALG.A.P.’s farm-level good agricultural practice scheme, covering crops, livestock, and aquaculture. It is a business-to-business scheme audited by accredited certification bodies — a supply-chain entry requirement rather than a consumer label or a legal permission to trade.
- Standard
GS1 Traceability Standards
GS1 standards provide the identification and data-exchange infrastructure that traceability runs on — the barcode, the identifiers behind it, and the event data that links them. They are plumbing rather than policy: they say how to identify and communicate, never what a business must trace or claim.
- Standard
HACCP
HACCP is a systematic approach to food safety that identifies the hazards of a specific product and process and controls them at the points where control matters. It is a method rather than a specification — which is why no two HACCP plans are alike, and why HACCP cannot be copied from a template.
- Standard
IFOAM Family of Standards
The IFOAM Family of Standards is a collection of organic standards assessed as meeting a common international benchmark. It solves a problem no single regulation can: it gives the fragmented world of organic definitions a shared reference point, without being law anywhere.
- Standard
IPPC Phytosanitary Standards (ISPMs)
The International Standards for Phytosanitary Measures are the ISPMs adopted under the International Plant Protection Convention. They are the plant-health counterpart to Codex: the international reference under the WTO SPS Agreement, applied through national plant protection organisations rather than by the IPPC itself.
- Standard
ISEAL Codes of Good Practice
The ISEAL Codes of Good Practice are standards for standards. They do not say what a sustainability scheme should require — they say how a credible scheme should be built, assured, and evaluated, which is a different and unusually recursive question.
- Standard
ISO 22000 Food Safety Management
ISO 22000 specifies requirements for a food safety management system for any organisation in the food chain. It wraps HACCP and prerequisite programmes inside a management-system framework — so it certifies how an organisation manages food safety, never the safety of a product.
- Standard
ISO 9001 Quality Management
ISO 9001 specifies requirements for a quality management system in any organisation. It is generic by design and says nothing about how good a product is — it addresses whether an organisation reliably delivers what it has undertaken to deliver, which is a narrower and frequently misread claim.
- Standard
ISPM 15 — Wood Packaging Material
ISPM 15 addresses the pest risk carried by wooden pallets, crates, and dunnage in international trade. It is unusual among standards: it regulates the packaging rather than the goods, which is why it reaches almost every trader regardless of what they ship.
- Certification scheme
Organic Certification
Organic certification is the mechanism by which an unverifiable production claim is made checkable. Organic status cannot be tested for in a product — it is a claim about how something was produced — so certification substitutes an audited paper trail for a laboratory result.
- Conformity assessment
Phytosanitary Certification System
A phytosanitary certification system is the national apparatus by which an exporting country inspects consignments and issues phytosanitary certificates. It is a government-to-government assurance: one country’s plant protection organisation attesting to another’s, which is what makes it unlike every private certification in this section.
- Certification scheme
Rainforest Alliance Certification
Rainforest Alliance certification is a voluntary sustainability scheme covering environmental, social, and economic practice in agricultural production. Its scope is deliberately broad — which is its strength as an assurance model and the reason a single seal carries an unusually heavy interpretive load.
- Conformity assessment
Third-Party Audit
A third-party audit is an assessment by an organisation independent of both the audited party and its customer. It is the mechanism behind nearly every certificate in agricultural trade — and understanding what an audit can and cannot establish is the difference between reading a certificate correctly and over-reading it.
- Standard
UNECE Fresh Produce Standards
The UNECE agricultural quality standards are a family of commercial quality standards for fresh fruit and vegetables and other produce, negotiated at the UN Economic Commission for Europe. They are the international template behind much of the world’s produce grading — but they are quality standards, not food-safety ones, and they bind nobody until adopted.
- Regulatory framework
USDA National Organic Program
The National Organic Program is the United States federal regulatory programme governing organic production and the USDA organic label. Like the EU regulation it is law rather than a voluntary scheme — the label is federally protected, and certification by an accredited certifying agent is a precondition for using it.
- Regulatory framework
WOAH Terrestrial Animal Health Code
The Terrestrial Animal Health Code is WOAH’s standard for safe international trade in terrestrial animals and their products. It is the animal-health reference named by the WTO SPS Agreement, and its distinctive feature is official disease status — a mechanism with no equivalent in food safety or plant health.
- Regulatory framework
WTO SPS Agreement
The SPS Agreement governs how WTO members may protect human, animal, and plant health through trade measures. It does not set any health standard — it disciplines how members set theirs, which is why it is the hinge connecting Codex, the IPPC, and WOAH to enforceable trade law.
- Regulatory framework
WTO TBT Agreement
The TBT Agreement disciplines technical regulations, standards, and conformity assessment procedures so they do not become disguised trade barriers. For agriculture it is the agreement behind labelling, quality, and terminology requirements — everything that is not a health measure.
Sources
This article draws on the following authoritative sources. See our sources & methodology for how they are selected.
- [1]Codex Alimentarius — international food standards (opens in a new tab)Authoritative
Codex Alimentarius Commission (FAO/WHO)
Cited for: International food standards, codes of practice, and hygiene texts
- Type:
- Intergovernmental organization
- Jurisdiction:
- Global
- Accessed:
- 2026-07-16
- [2]ISO — standards catalogue (opens in a new tab)Authoritative
International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
Cited for: International standards and conformity-assessment concepts
- Type:
- Standards body
- Jurisdiction:
- Global
- Accessed:
- 2026-07-16
- High
Cited for: Good practice in how voluntary sustainability standards are set and assured
- Type:
- Standards body
- Jurisdiction:
- Global
- Accessed:
- 2026-07-16