Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform (SAI Platform)

Farm Sustainability Assessment (FSA) version 3.0

The Sustainable Agriculture Initiative Platform (SAI Platform) is the primary global food & drink value chain initiative for sustainable agriculture. Initiated in 2002 by Nestlé, Unilever and Danone, it today has more than 80 members, which support the protection and improvement of the natural environment as well as the social and economic conditions of farmers, their employees and local communities. The SAI Platform has developed the Farm Sustainability Assessment (FSA), a tool to assess and improve farms’ sustainability. The tool was used to benchmark existing codes and schemes, such as ISCC.

Following the benchmark by the SAI Platform, ISCC PLUS and ISCC EU have been determined to FSA Gold level equivalence – meeting 100% essential, 100% intermediate and 82% advanced criteria against the FSA 3.0. The recognition is globally applicable, and it allows ISCC certified system users to sell their ISCC compliant products as “Equivalent to FSA 3.0 Gold.”

FSA Gold, the highest SAI Platform FSA performance level, all the “immediate requirements” must be fulfilled during the audits, and they are enough for the FSA Gold Level Equivalence. Under this scenario, the ISCC SAI Gold Add-on is no longer needed. The new SAI FSA 3.0 Gold Level Equivalence upgrading is valid from May 1, 2023.

The equivalence of ISCC with SAI Platform’s FSA 3.0 opens new doors for ISCC system users on a global level and enables them to access new markets with only one certificate.