Your certification body is not a vendor you can swap in a hurry. It inspects you, decides your certification, issues every certificate your buyers rely on, and can suspend all of it. Choosing badly is expensive in a way that shows up a year later.
Check these before you sign
- CategoryThe body must be accredited for your category, not merely accredited
- TracenetCertificates are issued there, with a unique verifiable code
- 7 daysWorking days an export transaction certificate should take, once documents are complete
- Your rightsStandards, procedures and inspection reports are owed to you, not favours
Accreditation Is Category-Specific
The National Accreditation Body accredits a certification body for particular categories — crop production, livestock, beekeeping, aquaculture, food processing and handling, animal feed processing, mushrooms, seaweed and greenhouse crops. A body accredited for crop production cannot certify your processing unit unless it also holds that category.
So the question is never "are you NPOP accredited?" It is "are you accredited for crop production and food processing and handling, and can I see it?" A company that grows, processes and exports needs its chain covered end to end — by one body across all of it, or by more than one body, with the joins understood before the season starts.
What NPOP Requires of the Body Itself
NPOP's accreditation criteria bind the certification body to a long list of obligations, including a quality management system, competent personnel, and explicit requirements on impartiality, independence, non-discrimination, confidentiality, conflict of interest, credibility and accountability. Those are not aspirations in the document; they are conditions of holding accreditation.
That matters commercially. A body that also consults for you on meeting the standard it will then audit you against is exactly the conflict the criteria exist to prevent.
What the Body Owes You
| When | What you are entitled to |
|---|---|
| At application | An up-to-date version of the National Standards for Organic Production, and an adequate description of the procedure for inspection, certification and appeals |
| As an existing operator | Communication of any changes in the standards and relevant procedures |
| Throughout | A valid contract with the certification body, and a valid certificate depicting the certified products |
| After any inspection | The right to copies of the inspection report and other documentation related to the certification of your products |
Ask for the appeals procedure at application, before there is anything to appeal. A body that cannot produce a written description of how inspection, certification and appeals work is not meeting a basic NPOP requirement — and you have learned something useful while it is still cheap to learn.
Timelines You Can Hold Them To
Transaction certificates are where a slow certification body starts costing you money, so NPOP puts limits on them. Once you have submitted complete documents, the body should issue:
| Transaction | Limit |
|---|---|
| Grower group or individual producer → trader or processor | Within 5 working days |
| Between processor, trader or retailer (domestic) | Within 3 working days |
| Export transaction certificate | Within 7 working days |
Two qualifications, both in the document: the clock runs from complete documents, and the limits do not apply where physical verification is required on risk analysis. Where your product was sourced and certified by another certification body, the original transaction certificates must be verified before yours is issued — which is a real reason for delay, and a reason to keep your supplier's paperwork clean.
Before you commit to a shipping date, ask the body what its current turnaround on export TCs is and whether your consignment is likely to attract physical verification. "Within 7 working days" is the standard, not a promise about your particular container.
Questions Worth Asking Before You Sign
- Which categories are you accredited for, and does that cover my whole chain — farms, processing unit, and trade?
- Who will inspect me, and do they have experience with my crop or process?
- What does your fee cover — inspection, certificate issuance, transaction certificates, sampling and laboratory analysis?
- What is your turnaround on transaction certificates in peak season?
- How do you handle an appeal against your own decision?
How the certification body's own duties look from the inside is covered in NPOP certificate issuance, which is useful reading before your first certification decision. KrushiFlow validates these fields and submits farmer records to the portal in bulk.