POLICY FOR
CERTIFICATIONPROCESSES
Operation Identification and social risk
mitigation in Brazil
Version 1.1 April 2020 – No 1/2020
Publication date: January 17th, 2020
Last Review: April 6th, 2020.

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More information?
For more information about the Rainforest Alliance, visit www.rainforest-alliance.org or, for
specific interpretation issues about this document contact certification@ra.org.

Translation Disclaimer
Translation accuracy of any Rainforest Alliance sustainable agriculture certification program
document into languages other than English is not guaranteed nor implied. Any question
related to the accuracy of the information contained in the translation, refer to the English
official version. Any discrepancies or differences created in the translation are not binding andhave no effect for auditing or certification purposes.

Disclaimer
Rainforest Alliance has a final say regarding the interpretation of the content and requirements
stated in this document.

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POLICY Nº 1/2020
Issue date:

Binding date:

Expiring Date:

January 17th 2020, revised April
6th 2020.

January 17th, 2020

Until further notice

Developed by:Approved by:

Senior S&A Officer

S&A Latin America Manager

Linked to (code and name of documents, if applicable):a) UTZ Certification Protocol for Brazil v1.1.
b) Rules for Planning and Conducting Audits of Rainforest Alliance v. April 2018.
Replaces:
Clause or criterion number and text:
Not applicable once it entails additional requirements.
Applicable to:

Audit types:

Certification Bodies

All audits for UTZ and Rainforest Allianceprograms carried out as of the binding
date, including the ones related tocontracts and agreements set between CBsand (prospect) Certificate Holders prior to
the biding date.

Regions:
BrazilCrops:

Organization types:

All crops.

RA and UTZ Certificate Holders.

INTRODUCTION
The Rainforest Alliance is a growing network of people who are inspired and committed toworking together to achieve our mission of conserving biodiversity and ensuring sustainable
livelihoods. Since January 2018, the UTZ Certification program is also part of Rainforest Alliance,as part of such network.
Brazil is a country of continental dimensions and singular agricultural characteristics,
nevertheless, also has legal bodies and entities with unique mechanisms of addressing social
issues. The aim of such policy is to bring closer the UTZ and Rainforest Alliance certification
processes to mechanisms of legal properties and employers’ identification and the addressingof social issues such as labor rights violations and analogous conditions to slavery labor.
Above all, offer more data transparency and accuracy in relation to certified unities in Brazil,
supporting the mitigation of social and environmental issues critical to certification processes.

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1. Member application to Certification processes.
1.1. As set in section 2.1.3.2 of UTZ Certification Protocol for Brazil v.1.1 and section 5.2 of
the Rules of Planning and Conducting Audits of Rainforest Alliance, all applications ofpotential members to certification UTZ and RA and the applications of members
already certified claiming recertification must be initiated through a certification
application. Such an application must be mandatorily done through the Integrated
Application form provided by Rainforest Alliance, where all information must be filledout.
1.2. The Application Form is the property of Rainforest Alliance and is intended to obtain
information about certification processes contextualized to Brazilian reality, as such itis the CB’s responsibility to guarantee the form is filled out and completed before
initiating the quotation and contract development processes for a (prospect)
certificate holder.
1.3. After the acceptance of the (prospect) certificate holder’s application forcertification or recertification, there must by a contract between the (prospect)
certificate holder and the Certification Body, as set forth in the section 2.3.1.3 of UTZ
Certification Protocol for Brazil v.1.1 and the section 5.2.d of the Rules of Planning andConducting Audits of Rainforest Alliance. The contracts for certification andrecertification services for UTZ and RA programs must:a) Inform the (prospect) certificate holder in a clause that the contract is subject tothe rules and determinations of the biding documents of the pertinentcertification process (UTZ Certification Protocol for Brazil, in case of UTZ
Certification; Rules for Certification and Rules for Planning and Conducting Auditsof Rainforest Alliance, for RA Certification) in their most recent versions. This meansthat in case there are modifications in these documents, the contract andquotation also are altered to be in conformity with the latest version of thesebinding documents.
b)
Include in the contract in one or more clauses all items determined in the section
2.3.1.3 of the UTZ Certification Protocol for Brazil v.1.1, including for Rainforest
Alliance certification. Specifically inform the (prospect) certificate holder thathuman rights violations and his/her inclusion in such violation databases may leadto decertification.
c)Include in the contract the quotation related to it as an attachment. The
quotation must mandatorily consider the items of section 2.3.1.3 of the UTZ
Certification Protocol for Brazil v.1.1, including for Rainforest Alliance certification.
d) Inform in the contract that conducting the audit service does not guarantee theissuing of certification, and that the audit constitutes one part of the certification
process and not its totality. The contract must also inform the (prospect)
certificate holder that the whole certification process is reviewed by Rainforest
Alliance, who has rights to deny certification if violations to the certification
binding documents are identified.
1.4. All documents related to the quotation and the contract must be developed for eachcertification cycle, dated and signed by the (prospect) certificate holder and/or its
legal responsible. Standardized contracts are accepted provided that they refer to a
specific (prospect) certificate holder and certification scope.
a) Non-dated or non-signed documents will be considered invalid, as this is noncompliant with the Binding Documents of UTZ and RA certification processes.
b) The acceptance of the quotation by the (prospect) certificate holder is notunderstood by Rainforest Alliance as a contract.
1.5. As per ISO 17065, the CBs must establish actions to mitigate the risks to impartiality of
its auditors. The contracts for the certification processes must:a) Be solely between the CB and the (prospect) certificate member as parties;

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b)
c)
d)

Have the payment for all audit services, including logistic costs of the auditor,
conducted by the (prospect) certificate member directly to the CB, thus not
being acceptable no payment, of any nature, done directly to auditors;
Installments and payment division in pre and post audits are allowed, provided
that nor the remuneration of the auditor, nor the reimbursement of his/her
expenses, nor the certification decision are depending on these payments;
The CB has the right to suspend a certificate of a certificate holder in case isholding a debt on the payment for the referred audit service.

2. Audit preparation in the context of social risks mitigation
2.1. The audit preparation and audit planning process for the Rainforest Alliance program
must consider and contain, additionally to what is requested in the Rules for Planningand Conducting Audits:a) Registrations and evidences that the CB has conducted a preliminary
investigation of the situation of the (prospect) certification holder in relation toadministrative and labor court prosecutions, to compose the risk analysis for theaudit. Such evidence can be complemented by a statement from the CB
indicating which consultations have been carried out and the result of suchconsultations.
b) Evidences of consultation of databases such as the Employer Registration that
identifies employers that have submitted workers to conditions analogous toslavery (Dirty List); IBAMA Seizure List and other official databases which the CB
understands as relevant to the certification process; The CB must attach astatement indicating which databases were consulted and the result of suchconsultations.
c)
A statement by the legal representative of the (prospect) certificate holder inwhich he/she declares all ongoing court prosecutions (including labor) in which
the (prospect)certificate holder is involved. Such information must be true, Provenfraud or omission of information will result in decertification.
2.2. The audit preparation and audit planning process for the UTZ program must consider
and contain, additional to what is determined in the UTZ Certification Protocol for Brazil
v1.1, the same items contained in the subitems of section 2.1 of this policy.
2.3. The statements issued by the CB regarding items 2.1.a and 2.1.b may be developed
based on the internal Quality System of the certification body, if they present minimallythe requested information in the referred items. The statement of item 2.1.c referred to
the legal responsible of the unity is responsibility of such, whereby the CB must assess
if the statement is sufficient for the purpose of this policy.

3. Official Identification of Certified Holders (1)3.1. The identification of certified unities must be done considering the following data for
individual and multi-site certification:a) CPF Number of legal responsible and his/her name;b) CNPJ number of the certified unity and its official registration name;c) Environmental Rural Registration (CAR) of all sites which compose the certification
process.
3.2. For Group certification, the same data must be inserted in the Group Member Registry(UTZ) or Group Member List (RA).
a) CPF Number of legal responsible and his/her name in the Member Identification
column.
b) Environmental Rural Registration (CAR) in the Governmental ID column.
3.3. For UTZ certification processes, this information must also be mandatorily narrated in
the audit checklist along with the narration of evidence for the Control Point I.A.1 for

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individual certification scope, or G.A.1 for group certification scope. In these Control
Points also mandatorily there must be a GPS coordinate of each certified unit, plus acentral Internal Management System location in case of group certification.
3.4. For Rainforest Alliance certification processes, the items a and b must be mentioned
in the Audit Report/Public Summary in the section ‘Farm Details’, where the legalname must contain the CNPJ and official name of the unity additionally to the nameto be shown at the certificate; and the CPF contained along with the name of thelegal representative. Item c must be included in the section 2.2 Scope for all sites thatcompose the certified unit and in the compliance evidence of criterion 1.1 along with
the GPS coordinates of the unit.
3.5. Related to the registration name in the Certification Program platforms SalesForce(Rainforest Alliance) and MultiTrace (UTZ), the naming standard of Certificate Holders
must be:a) the name of the farm followed by the name of the producer or producer group.
For example, the name of the certificate should be FARM NAME – Producer
Name; and in an event the farm has more than one owner considering multi-site
certification, it should be FARM NAME – Main Owner name & others.
b) In the case of groups, the name in the certificate can be the trade name bywhich the Producer Group identifies itself. In case an exporter or trader
financially supports the certification of a producer group, its name can also be
displayed in the certificate.
c) It is CB’s responsibility to guarantee the certificate naming is in line to thedeterminations of this policy.

4. Necessary documents for license/certification requests.
4.1. The license request for UTZ certification program must be done in MultiTrace
traceability system, and at License Request tab in the section Additional Documents
it is mandatory to send the following documents:a) Integrated Application Form, fully filled out;b) Commercial proposal or quotation signed and dated by the member;c)
Dated and signed contract between CB and member, with the disposals of thispolicy and the UTZ Certification Protocol for Brasil v1.1;d) Statements/evidences of the investigations determined in the items 2.1.a and2.1.b of this policy;e)
The risk analysis for the audit, as formalized by the internal quality system of theCertification Body (it may be considered the tab 3 of the Integrated ApplicationForm);
f)
Audit plan (it may be considered the tab 4 of the Integrated Application Form);g) Audit Length Calculation with filled out values determining the audit timing (it may
be considered the tab 2 of the Integrated Application Form);h)Registrations of opening and closing meeting;i)
For combined audits: Certification Body statement indicating which certification
schemes were covered in the combined audit and how the calculation time
methodology was considered, as set forth in the UTZ Certification Protocol for Brasil
v1.1.
4.2. The license request for Rainforest Alliance certification program must be done in
SalesForce traceability system, and at Engagement Attachments in the section
Attachments it is mandatory to send the following documents:a) Integrated Application Form, fully filled out;b) Commercial proposal or quotation signed and dated by the member;c)
Dated and signed contract between CB and member, with the disposals of thispolicy;SA-P-LA-1-V1

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d)
e)
f)
g)
h)
i)
j)
k)

Statements/evidences of the investigations determined in the items 2.1.a and2.1.b of this policy;
The risk analysis for the audit, as formalized by the internal quality system of theCertification Body (it may be considered tab 3 of the Integrated ApplicationForm);
Audit plan (it may be considered tab 4 of the Integrated Application Form);
Audit Length Calculation with filled out values determining the audit timing (it may
be considered the tab 2 of the Integrated Application Form);
Registrations of opening and closing meeting;
Checklist used in the audit;
Audit Report (Public and Confidential versions in pdf and excel format);Group Member List (if applicable, it may be used the tabs 1.a and 1.b of theIntegrated Application Form).

4.3. All documents must be sent so that Rainforest Alliance be able to analyze theconformity of all certification processes carried out in Brazil. The absence of any ofthese documents will result in the denial of the certification request/grant.
4.4. In case any of the documents present non-conformities as to what is determined in
the Biding Documents of UTZ and/or Rainforest Alliance programs or the applicablepolicies and instructions, the certification processes may be considered invalid
resulting in suspension, decertification or non-certification as set forth by the respective
biding documents of UTZ and RA certification programs.

5. Communication between the Certification Bodies and Rainforest Alliance.
5.1. The official communication channel between Certification Bodies and Rainforest
Alliance is the mail certification@ra.org, for both UTZ and Rainforest Alliancecertification processes. This is the proper channel to clear doubts about certification
processes, system operations and general clarifications needed.
5.2. The mails must mandatorily have as title in the following format: BRAZIL – Member ID(UTZ or RA) – Subject. All e-mail communications may be written in Portuguese or
English, as preferred, since the S&A team in Brazil will be replying to thesecommunications.

FOLLOW UPSI.

The CB’s Scheme Manager for Rainforest Alliance is responsible to convey thecontents of this policy to the relevant departments and people of his/herorganization.

II.

The Certification Body must send to Rainforest Alliance all the documents
template used for UTZ and/or RA certification activities, to be analyzed andapproved.
a. In case it is accredited for UTZ certification, the CB must observe the UTZ
Certification Protocol for Brazil v1.1. in section 2.3.1, at least sending whatis determined in the item 4.1. of this policy.
b. In case it is accredited for RA certification, the CB must observe the Rules
for Certification Rainforest Alliance and the sections 5, 6, 7 and of theRules for Planning and Conducting Audits of Rainforest Alliance; at leastsending what is determined in the item 4.2. of this policy.

III.

The Certification Body must make all necessary changes to the documents andsend them for analysis by February 29th 2020.

IV.

The Rainforest Alliance will inform the CB about its approval decision no later
than two weeks following receipt of the documents.

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V.

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In the case where Rainforest Alliance indicates need of changes in the sent
documents, and in the case the CB has already established commercial
contacts with (prospect) certificate holders, the CB is responsible to update therelevant documentation to these certification processes before submitting themfor analysis.

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