Certificates
What each certificate actually covers
A logo in a supplier presentation is not a certificate, and a certificate covering one site does not cover a second. Each page below sets out the scope, what falls outside it, and how we check the document against the register that issued it.
ASC
ASC certification
Covers a named farm and a named chain of custody. It does not cover the company that owns them.
Scope and verificationMSC
MSC certification
Certifies a wild fishery and the chain that handles its catch. A logo on a PDF is neither.
Scope and verificationHALAL
Halal certification
The certificate has to be recognised where the goods land, not where they were issued.
Scope and verificationBRCGS
BRCGS Food Safety
A food safety standard for a processing site. It says nothing about where the fish came from.
Scope and verificationHow a certificate is checked
A certificate is checked against the register that issued it, never against the presentation it appears in. Establishment approval is verified in the Norwegian Food Safety Authority’s register, ASC and MSC certificates in the schemes’ own public databases, and BRCGS in its directory. The certificate number, the site it covers and the expiry date are recorded each time, so a buyer can be told honestly when an audit is due.
Scope is where the misunderstanding usually sits. A certificate covers a named site, a named product group and a period — not a company, not everything that company sells, and not indefinitely. A chain of custody certificate says the product stayed traceable through a certified chain; it does not say the fish was farmed or caught to the standard. Each page below states what falls outside the scope as plainly as what falls inside it.