A Participatory Guarantee System for Good, Clean and Fair Coffee
A Participatory Guarantee System is an alternative certification model whereby producers and other stakeholders share a set of commonly-defined standards and norms, common procedures, a coordinating body, a common logo and defined consequences for non-compliance.
The Slow Food Coffee Coalition supports the creation of a Participatory Guarantee System (PGS) to identify Good, Clean and Fair Coffee.
“Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) are locally-focused quality assurance systems. They certify producers based on active participation of stakeholders and are built on a foundation of trust, social networks and knowledge exchange.”
Official Definition, 2008
The Slow Food Coffee Coalition believes that there is no such thing as a flawless certification system, but we prefer models based on trust, collaboration, and which do not financially burden producers.
Key elements of PGS:
shared vision and responsibilities
trust
horizontality
participation
learning process
ownership of the process at the local level
Are you interested or want to learn more?
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