ISCC PLUS and ISCC with SAI FSA Gold Add-on fulfill SAI Platform’s FSA 2.0 Silver and Gold Performance Levels– Opportunities in the Food Market

New opportunities have emerged for ISCC System Users in the global food market as ISCC fulfills the requirements of the Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (SAI).

The Sustainable Agriculture Initiative (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 protection and improvement of the natural environment as well as the social and economic conditions of farmers, their employees and local communities. The SAI has developed the Farm Sustainability Assessment (FSA), a tool to assess and improve farms’ sustainability (Link: www.fsatool.com/). The tool was used to benchmark existing codes and schemes, such as ISCC. Three performance levels exist within the FSA 2.0:

Bronze: Compliance to 100% ‘Essential’ questions and a minimum of 75%
‘Basic’ questions.
Silver: Compliance to 100% ‘Essential’ questions, 80% ‘Basic’ questions and a minimum of 50% ‘Advanced’ questions.
Gold: Compliance to 100% ‘Essential’ questions, 100% ‘Basic’ questions and a minimum of 75% ‘Advanced’ questions.

Following the benchmark by the SAI Platform, ISCC EU and ISCC PLUS have been determined equivalent to FSA Silver level. The recognition is globally applicable. It allows ISCC certified system users to sell their ISCC compliant products as “Equivalent to FSA 2.0 Silver”.

FSA Gold, the highest SAI Platform FSA performance level, can be fulfilled by system users applying the ISCC PLUS Add-on “SAI FSA Gold” on farm level. With this Add-on, products can be sold as “Equivalent to FSA 2.0 Gold” or as “ISCC Compliant with Add-on SAI FSA Gold”.

The Add-on “SAI FSA Gold “ does not introduce new sustainability criteria. Relevant criteria are part of the ISCC minor must criteria as outline in ISCC 202. Which of the minor must criteria system users will have to fulfill can be found under the ISCC PLUS Documents.

The equivalence of ISCC with SAI Platform’s FSA 2.0 opens new doors for ISCC system users on a global level and enables them to access new markets with only one certificate.