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Fair for Life: what it is and what it signals

Fair for Life is a fair trade certification applied to operators along a supply chain, from producers to brands. It is audited by Ecocert against a published standard, and it comes with a sibling label, For Life, that covers responsible practice without the fair trade content rules. Certified partners are listed publicly.

Type

Certifications and standards

Run by

Fair for Life, with certification by Ecocert

Since

2005

Headquarters

France

Official site

https://www.fairforlife.org/en/

Public list

https://www.fairforlife.org/en/our-partners/certified-partners/

What Fair for Life is

The programme describes itself as "a standard that puts fairness into practice throughout supply chains", covering agricultural, fishing and fish farming sectors and natural or artisanal products, and since 2022 also cosmetic, pharmaceutical and nutritional products. It "supports companies, producers and processors seeking to build fair, transparent and long-term trading relationships", and its requirements are grouped into eight main themes spanning social, environmental and fair trade conditions.

Two labels sit in the same programme. Fair for Life carries the fair trade requirements, including that a labelled product draw "80% of its raw materials" from fair trade sources. For Life is "the standard for responsible companies and sustainable sourcing", recognising a corporate social responsibility approach without that fair trade content rule. Which of the two an operator holds is the first thing to read.

Who runs it and since when

The standard was created in 2005 and revised in 2010 and 2013. In 2016 and 2017 the Fair for Life standard then held by IMO and the separate Ecocert Fair Trade standard were merged into a single standard, which is the one in force today. The programme publishes its current reference document openly, in a version in effect from April 2026.

The programme is administered from Paris, and Ecocert is the certification body that audits and certifies against it. Assessment is third-party by design: commitments made by labelled companies "are regularly assessed by an independent third-party", using internationally recognised certification principles, notably ISO 17065.

How an organization gets it

The certification is open to "producers, grower groups, processors, importers or exporters, brands, distributors", so an applicant is certified for its own role in a chain rather than for a product in the abstract. An operator applies to Ecocert, which quotes per operation rather than publishing a fee schedule, and is then audited against the eight themes in the current standard.

Fair for Life adds trading conditions on top of the social and environmental requirements. The standard mandates "pricing mechanisms designed to ensure fair remuneration for producers" and "an economic protection mechanism for producers, including a minimum price calculated on the basis of their production costs". Certification is maintained through regular independent audits rather than granted once, and the partner record carries a performance assessment that the programme expects to move over time.

What it signals, and what it does not

A Fair for Life certificate tells you that a named operator was audited by a third-party body against a published standard, for a stated role and scope, and that the trading conditions including a cost-based minimum price were part of what was checked. For a producer organisation that is a useful, specific claim about how it is paid.

It does not rate a company. It covers the certified operation, role and products, so a brand can carry the label on one line while the rest of its business sits outside the scheme. For Life is not the same claim as Fair for Life, and treating the two as interchangeable overstates what a holder has met. The label also runs on an audit cycle, so a lapsed certificate leaves packaging and websites unchanged.

How to verify a claim

Use the certified partners list, which "presents companies with the Fair for Life or For Life label" and can be filtered by country, label, sector and role. Match the legal entity and country, then read the label and the role, because those two fields are what separate a certified producer from a trader or a brand holder using certified inputs.

The programme states that "each partner has an up-to-date performance assessment", so the record is expected to reflect current standing rather than a one-time award. If an operator is absent, ask for the certificate and the Ecocert client reference, and check whether the claim belongs to a supplier further up the chain; a brand can market a certified ingredient without holding certification itself. A partner listed under For Life is not making a fair trade claim.

Size and geography

Our copy of the public list holds 54 organizations across 16 countries, pulled 2026-09-10.

• Peru 15
• Indonesia 7
• Mexico 6
• Vietnam 5
• Chile 4
• Paraguay 4
• Bolivia 3
• Colombia 2
• Cambodia 1
• Costa Rica 1
• Dominican Republic 1
• Guatemala 1

Often held together

Organizations carrying Fair for Life in our data most often also hold:

• USDA Organic (23 organizations)
• Regenerative Organic Certified (12 organizations)
• Fairtrade (8 organizations)
• Rainforest Alliance (2 organizations)
• B Corp (1 organizations)
• IKEA Social Entrepreneurship (1 organizations)

In the Tokens for Good directory

None of the organizations researched so far carries this label. Submit one, or contribute research with spare Claude capacity.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Fair for Life, home checked 2026-09-17
2. Fair for Life, the Fair for Life programme checked 2026-09-17
3. Fair for Life, the For Life label checked 2026-09-17
4. Ecocert, Fair for Life fair trade certification checked 2026-09-17
5. Fair for Life, certified partners checked 2026-09-17