Special Newsletter for Inspectors and
Certifier Personnel
Greetings t
o
our Inspectors
and Certif
iers,
This newsletter is especially for you, so we can improve communication, clarify issues and procedures, and inform you of resources available on our website. The newsletter will be published on an as-needed basis. We hope this will make your life easier when it comes to FairTSA Certification. Also, please forward this newsletter to your colleagues or forward their email address to
Winfried Fuchshofen for the FairTSA Team
Guidance Documents
A few months ago we started to create guidance documents to clarify issues relating to grey areas not addressed properly in the standard. Current issues of the guidance concern quinoa production in Bolivia, conducting informal interviews, what to emphasize on the first inspection, and exemptions for certain processing plants (tolling operations) not owned by the certified operation. All guidance documents can be downloaded from our website at http://fairtsa.org/certifier-forms.html. If you don't have the required password for the website please email Eileen and she will send it to you.
Inspection and Certification Review Forms
The latest versions of our Inspection and Certification Review forms (version 3.2xx) are available from the same webpage mentioned above. The webpage documents will always have the current version, so when in doubt use these. Spanish translations of the latest versions are still in the works, so for the time being you can still use Version 3.0 (also downloadable from the website).
New Inspection and Certification Forms, Standard Version 4.0
We are currently discussing the timelines for a new standard version and the next version of the inspection and certification documents. We will publish the timeline for this on our website in early July. There will be a period of 3 months where we will solicit input for the new version of the standard and the new forms. If you have important input already, you can send it to Eileen with either "Standard Input" or "Inspection Forms Input" in the reference subject line.
Resources for Farmers, Cooperatives and Processing Facilities
Realizing that smaller producer entities often have difficulty complying with basic standard requirements, most often from a lack of resources and knowledge, we have created basic documents for their perusal. Currently we have templates for a simple employment contract, an umbrella contract for seasonal and part-time workers, a basic occupational health and safety policy, and a community development project plan and evaluation form. We will continue creating such resources going forward. If you have an idea for a helpful template, please let us know. All resources are available from our website at http://fairtsa.org/resources.html.
