I recently attended a standards committee meeting where the subject of certification was raised. The discussion related to apparent confusion in the marketplace that the only acceptable certification mark is the mark owned by the organization that developed the standard.
Although standards developers such as NSF International (NSF), Underwriters Laboratory (UL) and the American Society of Sanitary Engineering (ASSE), to name a few, offer third-party certification and listing of products to the standards they develop, I was surprised to hear that there is still a misunderstanding in the marketplace that manufacturers can only obtain certification from the standards writer. The two functions of standards development and product certification are distinct and not linked.