Wood Lexicon Betterwood Technical terms

Chain of Custody

Term from the English for product chain. Particularly well-known in the timber trade for the COC certification (Chain-of-Custody-Certification) of the FSC®. Because for an FSC® certificate it is not enough if the forest alone has to be managed sustainably. All participants in the retail chain through to the end customer must submit to the independent controls of the FSC®. The FSC® standard for product chain certification (FSC®-STD 40 004) applies to processing and trading companies worldwide. The standard regulates the traceability of materials and thus creates transparency in the product chain. To ensure that material flows can actually be checked along the entire product chain, every company in the product chain (processing and trading) must be certified according to the COC standards.