FSC Publishes Revised Directive on Sourcing Controlled Wood to Ensure Consistency

On 4 November 2015, the Policy and Standards Director of FSC International Center approved a revised FSC Directive on FSC Controlled Wood (FSC-DIR-40-005), to standardize understanding and implementation of the requirements of the Standard for Company Evaluation of FSC Controlled Wood (FSC-STD-40-005 V2-1), to ensure it is in line with the rest of the FSC normative framework.

November 16, 2015

A directive is a collection of advice notes that provide additional information about the interpretation and implementation of normative requirements. The FSC Directive on FSC Controlled Wood (FSC-DIR-40-005) is needed to standardize understanding and implementation of the Standard for Company Evaluation of FSC Controlled Wood (FSC-STD-40-005 V2-1). Updates were made to three advice notes to ensure the directive is in line with the rest of the FSC normative framework.

The advice notes and changes made to them were:

ADVICE 40-005-10 When Shall an FSC Controlled Wood Code be Issued By the Certification Body?This advice note was deleted because its requirements were superseded by the standard used by certification bodies to evaluate chain of custody operations, FSC-STD-20-011 V2-0 Chain of Custody Evaluations.
ADVICE 40-005-16 What is the Sampling Rate and Pool that Certification Bodies Shall Use for Field Evaluations of Supplies from Sources with Unspecified Risk? This advice note was also deleted because its requirements were superseded FSC-STD-20-011 V2-0 Chain of Custody Evaluations.
ADVICE 40-005-20 Sourcing of Co-products under the EU Timber Regulation. The expiry date of this advice note was modified following decisions made by the FSC Board of Directors at their 69th meeting in August 2015 in Malaysia. The previous expiry date of 31 December 2015 was replaced with a non-fixed date that will correspond with the end of the transition period of the revised version of FSC-STD-40-005. This ensures that the advice note remains valid until it is replaced by the revised standard, which was previously planned to enter into force by 1 January 2016.

It is important to note that the standard that is the subject of this directive, FSC-STD-40-005 V2-1, is undergoing revision. The revision has incorporated all the relevant rules of the directive into the revised standard (V3-0) to reduce the number of normative documents in the FSC system and make the standard easier to use. Once the revised standard is approved and enters into force, a one-year transition period will begin. By the end of the transition period, the current standard and the directive will be replaced.