4. Definitions

Board

A decision-making authority of the Conseil des appellations réservées et des termes valorisants.

Conseil des appellations réservées et des termes valorisants

A body that has jurisdiction over the compliance of products bearing designations reserved by Québec’s Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, according to the standards prescribed for these designations.

Consensus

A general agreement characterized by the absence of sustained opposition to substantial issues by any important part of the concerned interests and by a process seeking to take into account the views of all parties concerned and to reconcile any conflicting arguments (excerpt from the ISO/IEC Guide 2).

Note: "Consensus does not necessarily imply unanimity." (Excerpt, ISO/IEC Guide 2).

Standards

A document that provides rules or guidelines governing the repeated use of products, processes or production methods. Standards may also include terminology, as well as labelling and packaging requirements that apply to the product, process or production method.

Interested parties

Persons or groups of persons that may be directly affected by the application of standards referring to a designation, and originating from one of the following parties:

1. First party: Manufacturers or suppliers, including firms that cultivate, raise or grow (agricultural producers) and/or prepare (transforming, processing, as well as any firm modifying a product's original labelling in order to resell it under its own brand name) products that it offers for sale;
2. Second party: Certifiers (mainly including certifying bodies, certification mark owners);
3. Third party: Consumers (including consumer associations, in particular).

Designation users

Firms licensed by a certifier accredited by the CARTV, and that sell certified products pursuant to a given designation. In ISO terms, these are certified product suppliers.

Accreditation Manual

Basic reference document containing the requirements that a certifying body must comply with in order to obtain accreditation from the CARTV. These requirements form the criteria and standards with which a certifying body’s evaluation results are compared when the CARTV makes a decision regarding accreditation. The Board is responsible for adopting any accreditation manuals, based on the proposals submitted by the Standards Committee, whose function is to prepare and amend it in accordance with the Minister’s regulations and the procedure set out in the CARTV Standardization Program.