The 4C Association announced on 15 September that it graduated to full membership status in the ISEAL Alliance. The ISEAL Alliance is a global association for social and environmental standards setting organisations. The 4C Association joins other recognised coffee-related certifications including Fairtrade International, UTZ and Rainforest Alliance, who are also full ISEAL members. The 4C Association first joined ISEAL as an associate member in 2009. To be eligible for full membership, the group had to undergo an independent external evaluation to demonstrate full compliance with ISEAL's Impacts Code and Assurance Code. “By achieving full ISEAL membership, the 4C Association has demonstrated that its standard setting process is credible, transparent and participatory,” said Melanie Rutten-Sulz, Executive Director of the 4C Association. The ISEAL was founded at the end of the 1990s by four certification organisations – FSC, IFOAM, Fairtrade and MSC. the ISEAL now covers eight certification organisations, and in 2002 was registered in the UK as a not-for-profit. The 4C Association began as a Public Private Partnership project in 2002 called the Common Code for the Coffee Community (CCCC). It is now an independent association made up of coffee producers, trade and industry, and civil society. Members of the 4C Association developed the 4C Code of Conduct, which sets out social, environmental and economic principles for the sustainable production, processing and trading of green coffee. The association aims to help coffee farmers get started on sustainability and step up from the sustainability baseline to more demanding standards.
