To claim the sustainability of an ingredient of a product with Fairfood International, information about the level of sustainability of its products must first be provided in order to go through an assurance trajectory (check) of said claim. Fairfood accepts the following documentation and other initiatives for verification of the claim.
 
Brand owners are requested to submit (one or more) of the following documents in support of their sustainability claim:

• Audit reports;
  
  There are two different types of audit reports which are accepted by Fairfood: third party audits and second party audits. Fairfood strongly encourages auditing visits not to be carried out only by professional firms, but also by stakeholders and civil society organisations. Finally, also second party audits carried out by the brand company on the supplier may be accepted, as long as they are performed by in-house auditors, who have obtained due qualifications and accreditation (SA8000, IRCA, etc.).

• Certification of compliance with one of the sustainable initiatives accepted by Fairfood;
  
  A number of initiatives in the agri-food sector that seek to address the social, ecological and economic barriers in food production, processing, sourcing and trade are studied by Fairfood. When these initiatives are approved, they are tagged as possible “Solutions”. These possible “Solutions” can either be in form of certification labels, corporate programs, sector/multi-stakeholder initiatives or subject-specific initiatives. By acquiring one of these international recognized certifications, the brand owner demonstrates the product complies with a specific standard.

• Supplier codes of conduct;
  
  Supplier codes of conduct generally set minimum standards on the working conditions suppliers must meet. Therefore, supplier codes of conduct may be an acceptable evidence to prove the brand owners’ commitment to sustainability performance. Nevertheless, since ‘commitment’ does not automatically mean performance, brand owners are requested to invest adequate resources to monitoring suppliers and helping them to make improvements. Accordingly, a code of conduct must be considered as a document which needs to be supported within a reasonable period of time by an appropriate verification and monitoring phase.

• Declarations of compliance undersigned by brand owners;
  
  When a brand owner decides under his/her full responsibility to guarantee that the issues are met, but no regular proof is available, then he/she can sign a declaration of compliance. The declaration of compliance has to be accompanied by a clear commitment to collect the required documents within a reasonable period of time. The support to a declaration of compliance is recommended to be provided within the first harvesting period and not exceed a period of one year. Fairfood can decide to support the brand owner in finding ways to provide such proof. However, such support will never imply for Fairfood to bear its costs (unless it is part of an internal program).

• Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report.
  
  Since most CSR reports are self declarations, in order for a CSR report to be accepted by Fairfood, the CSR report should be audited/validated by a third party. Furthermore, Fairfood recognizes the value of a CSR Report written according to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) G3 standards and, in case a company is following such guidelines, in reporting a score with an (+) is required. Fairfood must be allowed to select those parts of the reports which demonstrate that the company is complying with the sustainable performance with the priority issues established for each main ingredient/sector.