What the mark asserts
Most food marks are claims about a quality nobody can measure at the shelf. This one is a claim about a measurement, and the measurement is published. That makes it checkable, and it also makes its limits precise.
The mark does not say a product is safe. No test can say that, and a certifier who implies it has told a customer something it cannot support. It says the product was tested at or below every published value for its subcategory, in that product’s native basis, on the ten-analyte panel, by an accredited laboratory, within a stated period.
Artwork
Program Manual Part 2.5 governs who may display the mark and what may be claimed alongside it, but sets no minimum size, clear space or color-reproduction rules. Those belong in a mark usage guide that does not exist yet. Until it does, this page states no dimensions rather than inventing them — a printer following a fabricated spec would be following nothing.
Who may display it
Mark usage is gated on certification status, per SKU. It is not a brand-level entitlement, and it does not survive a status change.
A brand must hold at least one SKU at Status A or B before any use of the mark is permitted. Products inside the Confidential Remediation Track may not display it — the Track protects the record, not the right to advertise.
Program Manual Part 2.5 §6.1.
Prohibited claims
The mark certifies that a product has been independently tested and meets defined action levels under an ongoing surveillance protocol. It does not certify safety, and that distinction is what the prohibited list protects.
Prohibited wording is quoted from Program Manual Part 2.5 §6.2, which names it as a non-exhaustive list. Any language implying absence of heavy metals or elimination of risk falls under the same rule.
Dropping and re-entry
A brand that pulls the mark during a bad period cannot quietly restore it on the first good lot. Without this rule, selective display would let a brand hide an exceedance and then present an unbroken certification record — the mark would signal luck rather than sustained compliance.
Re-entry to mark usage requires three consecutive passing lot results at Status A or B levels, and closure of any open CAPA associated with that SKU. This applies whether the mark came off voluntarily or by enforcement.
Program Manual Part 2.5 §6.3 — anti-arbitrage.
Brand visibility controls
A brand may opt out of publicly displaying its certified SKUs in any program registry or consumer-facing surface. The decision to show or hide a certified SKU rests entirely with the brand, and it is set per SKU rather than per account.
The public register is therefore not a census of certified products. A product may be certified and deliberately absent from it. That is why certificate lookup is single-record and keyed to a lot, certificate number or product code — a browsable list could never be complete, and presenting one as complete would be the misleading part.
Program Manual Part 2.5 §6.4.
Control and non-discrimination
Federal certification-mark registration is in process with the USPTO under Lanham Act §1054; the EU filing is parallel and also pending. A registered certification mark carries obligations a trademark does not — the owner must control how the mark is used, may not produce the goods it certifies, and may not refuse to certify a product that meets the standard. The program commits to operating under those obligations now, while registration is pending, rather than treating them as something that begins on the day a certificate issues.
The published standard is the only gate. Any product that tests at or below every value in the Master Limit Table for its subcategory, on the stated panel and basis, is certified — regardless of who makes it, whether they hold other Institute of Contaminant Standards (ICS) programs, or what they sell alongside it. The fee pays for the audit. It does not buy the outcome, and no fee tier changes a threshold.
Unlike §§6.1–6.4 above, this section is not reproduced from Program Manual Part 2.5. The manual contains no non-discrimination provision. The commitments here are drafted from the obligations that attach to a registered certification mark, and each is binding on the program once published — they belong in the Governance Policy before this page ships.
A denial can be appealed to the Independent Appeals Committee, whose review is binding on the program operator. That route exists precisely so that a refusal can be tested by someone who does not answer to the party who issued it.