Eleven clauses, and one of them surprises everybody.
What a producer has to be able to show to hold the mark. Most of it is paperwork they already have. Clause nine is the one that causes arguments.
The eleven clauses.
One — you exist where you say you exist
A real premises we can visit, at an address that matches your registration. Roughly one applicant a year fails here, and it is always a broker rather than a maker.
Two — the claims on your label are true
Every origin, breed, method and time claim on the pack has to be evidenced. "Handmade" needs hands. "Local" needs a distance.
Three — you can trace an ingredient back one step
Not full chain traceability. One step, to the business you bought it from, with a document.
Four — your food hygiene rating is 4 or 5
Checked against the Food Standards Agency, not taken on trust. A 3 is a conversation, not a refusal.
Five — your public liability cover is current
Certificate seen, expiry date recorded, and it goes on the register as a due date.
Six — your waste goes somewhere you can name
Trade waste transfer notes, or a named farm taking it for stock feed or composting.
Seven — your animals, if you have them, are inspected
Assurance scheme membership or a named vet with a visit record.
Eight — you pay your own suppliers on stated terms
Whatever the terms are, they are written down and you meet them. We do not set them.
Nine — you will tell us when something goes wrong
A recall, a failed batch, a hygiene downgrade, a supply change that alters what is in the product. Within forty-eight hours, before we hear it elsewhere.
Ten — you will let a customer see the process
Not necessarily on demand and not necessarily free, but the door has to be openable. A producer who cannot show anybody how the food is made is a producer we cannot vouch for.
Eleven — you can leave whenever you like
One email, no notice period, no clawback. The mark is not a contract.
Clause nine is the one that causes arguments.
-
Telling a customer that something went wrong is commercially irrational.
Every instinct in food retail says handle it quietly, fix it, and move on. A producer who calls their largest customer to say a batch was wrong is volunteering for a difficult conversation and possibly a delisting.
So most schemes do not ask for it, and the ones that do rarely enforce it.
Nobody has ever lost this mark for a failure. Two have lost it for not mentioning one.
-
Which is why it is the clause with teeth.
The mark can survive a producer having a bad batch. It cannot survive a producer having a bad batch that we found out about from a customer, because at that point the mark has certified nothing.
Both of the removals this scheme has made were under clause nine. Neither was about food safety. Both were about silence.
-
And it cuts both ways.
This estate has published its own failures — the trout card, the wool blankets, the flour name, sixty per cent of two thousand glass bottles. It would be difficult to demand clause nine of a two-person bakery while running a shop that quietly corrects its own labels.
What the standard is not.
| People assume | Actually |
|---|---|
| It is an organic certification | It is not. Organic status is certified by a licensed body and this is not one |
| It is a food safety scheme | It is not. That is Environmental Health, and clause four simply reads their rating |
| It is a quality grade | It is not. There is no tasting panel and no scoring. A dull cheese can hold the mark |
| It is British-only | Not automatically. Clause two requires origin claims to be true, not to be British |
| It costs money | It does not, at any stage, which is the only reason to trust the register |
| It is recognised by a regulator | By nobody whatsoever. It is a private mark and we say so on every page |
What holding the mark involves.
Required
- A premises we have physically visited
- Label claims checked line by line against evidence
- One-step-back traceability on every ingredient
- A current Food Standards Agency rating of 4 or 5
- Public liability cover, seen and dated
- A forty-eight hour duty to tell us when something goes wrong
- The right to walk away by email with no notice
Not part of it
- Any fee, at any point
- Any exclusivity to this estate
- Any obligation to supply us at all
- Any claim about organic status
- Any claim about food safety beyond the FSA rating
- Any recognition by a regulator or trade body
The standard, at a glance.
Eleven clauses
Eight ordinary, three ours.
Twelve-month cycle
From the audit date, not the calendar.
Clause nine
Tell us within forty-eight hours.
No fee
Which is what makes the register readable.
How the audit actually runs.
Half a day, unannounced inside a fortnight window, and what happens when a clause fails.
What people actually ask.
The two questions this page gets most, answered without a support ticket.
No. This is an unsolicited third-party demonstration build, not affiliated with or endorsed by any of the businesses it describes.
Public filings, published rankings and press reporting, each labelled on the page as a verified record, a founder claim or a third-party estimate.
