Fair Trade Certification Editing and Proofreading Services

A certifier audits a cocoa co-operative and records that the premium was used for community development in accordance with the standard. Two years later a journalist asks the co-operative's members what the premium paid for. Most do not know. The general assembly minutes show a vote, but not the amount, not what was proposed against what, and not who was present. The audit report cannot show whether the members decided how their own premium was spent, which is the thing the standard exists to require.

We edit what fair trade certifiers and participants produce — audit reports and non-conformity findings, premium use and general assembly documentation, producer organisation compliance records, supply chain traceability and mass balance records, certification scope and product attestation documents, standard interpretation guidance and criteria explanations, corrective action plans and follow-up verification records, trader and licensee agreements, and public claims and on-pack labelling guidance. Our editors work on the audit record that has to show a decision was actually the members'.

The premium use record is the specific evidence that producers, not buyers or managers, controlled the money, and its failure is a report confirming compliance without recording the decision that would demonstrate it. We work through these so the general assembly decision is recorded with the amount, the specific proposals put, the vote counts and the attendance against the membership roll, rather than noted as approved by the assembly, since a decision without those figures cannot show that members actually chose; so the premium received and the premium spent are reconciled with any balance carried forward stated, given that an unreconciled premium account is where the question of where the money went actually lives; so the auditor records who was interviewed, in what language, whether management was present, and how the sample was selected, because a worker interview conducted in front of a supervisor establishes very little and reads identically to one that was not; so a finding is stated against the specific criterion number it relates to, since a general observation cannot be tracked to closure across audit cycles; and so what the auditor could not verify is recorded as unverified rather than omitted, given that a silent report reads as a clean one. Records written this way can still answer the question two years later.

Everything you send is treated in confidence, including audit findings, producer information and certification records. We are editors rather than auditors, certification bodies or standard-setters, and we offer no view on compliance determinations, standard interpretation or audit conclusions. What we can do is make sure the record shows the decision, not just the conclusion.