The Importance of Product Certification
Today, many products require testing for conformance with specifications or compliance with safety or other regulations before they are put in the market. Even simple products may require supporting technical documentation that includes test data. It isn ‟ t always practical for these activities to be carried out by suppliers and customers, and so often specialized third parties get involved. In addition, national legislation may require such testing to be carried out by independent bodies, particularly when the products have health or environmental implications. In fact, conformity assessment has become an important component of world trade and it ‟ s often carried out by specialist organizations, such as inspection and certification bodies and testing laboratories.
Objectives of Product Certification:
1. to address the needs of consumers, users and, more generally, all interested parties by giving confidence regarding fulfilment of specified requirements. 2. to allow suppliers to demonstrate to the market that their products have been attested to fulfil specified requirements by an impartial third party body.
3. toprovide confidence for those with have an interest in fulfilment of requirements, and sufficient value so that suppliers can effectively market products.
Schemes of Product Certification
Certification schemes for agricultural and food products provide assurance( through a certification mechanism) that certain characteristics or attributes of the product or its production method or system, laid down in specifications, have been observed. They cover a wide range of different initiatives that work at different stages of the food supply chain( pre- or post-farm gate; covering all or part of the food supply chain; affecting all sectors or just one market segment, etc). They can operate at the business-to-business( B2B) level where the supermarket or processing business is the intended final recipient of the information, or at a business-to-consumer( B2C) level. They can use logos although many, especially the B2B schemes, don ‟ t do it.
The development of certification schemes is driven mainly by factors such as social demands for certain characteristics of the product or its production process on one hand( mostly for B2C schemes), and operators ' desire to ensure that their suppliers meet specified requirements, on the other hand( mostly for B2B schemes). In the area of food safety, Regulation( EC) N. 178 / 2002( laying down general principles and requirements of food law) puts the primary responsibility for ensuring that food and feed satisfying the requirements of food law and verifying that such requirements are met, on the level of food and feed business operators. Large players in the food supply chain often rely on certification schemes in order to satisfy themselves that a product meets the requirements and to protect their reputation and liability in the event of a food safety incident.
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