Executable

Does this page say the coffee is fair trade?

ALS-COFFEE-1.2-CERT-002

This question is asked as a test and produces a result for a real page.

Assertion

fair_trade_claim_stated is_stated true

Applicability

applies when
the product is roasted coffee offered to consumers in any format
signal
product_type or title indicates coffee

Accepted evidence

  • product_description — an explicit scheme claim naming the certified counterparty e.g. Fairtrade certified beans from a co-operative in Huila.
  • structured_data — the same statement inside the JSON-LD product description
  • product_faq — the same statement in FAQ structured data

Explicitly insufficient evidence

What does not count, and why. Published because the omission is where a check quietly becomes a claim.

  • lowercase generic "fair trade", "fairly traded", "fair trade principles"
    These sit outside every scheme, and their lexical closeness to the certified mark is the whole problem: a reader cannot tell a scheme claim from a sentiment.
  • "we believe fair trade should be the industry standard"
    An aspiration about the industry is not a claim about this product, and the engine currently credits it — a pinned corpus defect that makes this the least reliable executable entry in the standard.
  • a Fair Trade USA seal treated as the same thing as the FAIRTRADE Mark
    They are different schemes with different standards, different marks and different registers, and one of the two registers is behind a login, so conflating them launders the unverifiable one.
  • a co-operative's certification identifier presented as the roaster's
    The co-operative's certification is genuine and the inference is wrong; the mark on a consumer pack requires a licence held by the brand, which is a separate arrangement.
  • a rendered scheme logo with no identifier
    A logo image is not page text, resolves to nothing, and is the easiest element on a page to copy.
  • "we pay above the market price" or "direct trade"
    These are real trade practices with no scheme, no definition and no register, so they are self-declared and are routinely substituted for a scheme claim.
  • a mass-balance or sourcing-programme variant read as product certification
    A certificate-holder record cannot establish what fraction of the coffee in a given bag is certified, so a sourcing-programme claim answers a different question.

Conflict rules

  • When a scheme claim appears only in a review quote or a customer question — then a customer's words are not the store's statement and must not satisfy the assertion precedence: product_description > product_faq
  • When two different schemes are named on one page — then record both as stated; the standard does not rank schemes or resolve which applies to this lot

What a pass licenses

A pass establishes: That readable product text on this page contains a fair-trade phrase of some form, quoted verbatim where a clean sentence exists.

A pass does NOT establish: That any scheme certified anyone, which scheme is meant, that the seller holds a licence, or that the phrase is a claim rather than an aspiration or a comparison.

Discrimination

Measured fail rate: 96.0% (96 of 100 adjudicated)

95% interval: 90.2% – 98.4%, against a 15-85% target band (wilson95 vs target band)

Verdict: Not discriminating — the whole 95% interval lies outside the target band, so almost every store answers the same way. This is evidence for a retirement decision and is not the decision.

Declared bias in the instrument

A 95% interval bounds SAMPLING error and nothing else. These are the known biases in the measuring instrument for this row, declared rather than netted — where two point in opposite directions and neither is quantified, combining them into one signed number would be a guess wearing a direction.

  • deflates fail rate, 0pp
    Measured false-pass rate of this engine on this entry, from the row-by-row audit of the same run (experiments/v3-2/verdicts.json): 0 of this entry's 4 pass rows were confirmed wrong. Correcting them moves rows from pass to fail, so the measured fail rate is BELOW the true one.
  • inflates fail rate, UNQUANTIFIED
    The bounded semantic tier was DISABLED for this run: experiments/v3-2/run_standard.ts sets PRODUCT_TEST_SEMANTIC=0. It applies only to requirements of kind `claim` (src/server/productTest.ts#applySemanticTier). Its GRANT path promotes a claim the lexical term list missed; with the tier off, a page that states this claim in wording the vocabulary does not carry is recorded as a fail, so this path pushes the measured rate ABOVE the true one. UNQUANTIFIED: the audit read PASS rows only, and fail rows carry no false-negative information, so no artifact in this repo bounds it.
  • deflates fail rate, UNQUANTIFIED
    The same disabled tier, its OTHER path. A semantic VETO withdraws a lexical match whose sentence is about something else; with the tier off those matches stand as passes, so this path pushes the measured rate BELOW the true one. Declared separately and NOT netted against the grant path above: neither is measured, so nothing establishes which dominates, and a single signed claim about the tier would be a guess wearing a direction.

⚠️ THIS VERDICT MAY NOT BE ACTED ON AS A RETIREMENT, and the document says so rather than working around it. The rule `bias_exceeds_margin` blocks a retirement whose margin to the band edge is smaller than a declared bias pointing at that edge, and an unquantified bias blocks it outright. This is a claim row measured with the semantic tier off, which is exactly such a bias. The entry therefore stays `executable` and keeps running. A measured `not_discriminating` verdict is EVIDENCE for a retirement decision; it is not the decision. Recomputed by `standards/coffee/issue_v1_2.ts` from experiments/v3-2/standard_run3.jsonl through the shipped `verdictFor` in standards/discrimination.ts; no re-run, no network, no spend. Cross-checked against experiments/v3-2/discrimination.json and standards/coffee/v1.0/fitness.json.

Authored expectation: no prediction, confidence low. The numeric band this standard used to carry is not published at this grammar version.

Scheme claims are less common than organic in specialty coffee, where direct-trade language often replaces them, but the engine's dictionary also matches the generic lowercase phrase, so the pass condition is much broader than the scheme question. The band reflects both effects pulling in opposite directions.

The numeric fail-rate band this reasoning was authored with is NOT carried at grammar 1.2 and is not reproduced here. Authored bands held 1 of 10 against this category's own sample and every miss was HIGH, so a direction derived from the band would inherit the error that condemned it (SCHEMA.md §9.3 step 3). The band survives in ALS-COFFEE v1.1 (standard_hash f8ec2780f60c38931913e5b6cd37506500c8462709209de7180ba6691d6137e7), which is byte-frozen and still served.

Known gaps

  • "We believe fair trade should be the industry standard." — false_pass
    The single most damaging collision in this standard: an aspiration, and in context often a denial, is credited as a stated claim. Pinned open in the corpus.
  • "Love that it's fragrance-free!" — a customer in Portland. — false_pass
    Review quotes credited as the store's statement, which applies to every claim row.
  • "A gift bundle of our house blends." with the claim phrase in shipping-policy chrome — false_pass
    Claim rows accept the shipping-policy surface; being fixed concurrently.

For a shopper

There are several different fair-trade schemes and one generic phrase that belongs to none of them, so the useful question is which scheme is named and who is certified under it. One of the two main schemes publishes a free searchable register; the other keeps its authoritative lookup behind a login, so a claim under it cannot be checked from outside.

For a merchant

Name the scheme exactly, name the certified counterparty, and publish the scheme identifier where you hold one, so that a reader can resolve the claim in the scheme's own register instead of relying on a logo.

Grounding

  • Fairtrade International, traceability in Fairtrade supply chains (certification_body)
    that all Fairtrade coffee is fully physically traceable while cocoa, tea, sugar and juices may use mass balance, and that certified producers and traders are distinct from licensees who put the mark on a consumer pack
  • FLOCERT Fairtrade Customer Search (certification_body)
    that a free public search of certified organisations exists and is browsable by status, product, country and function, confirmed live by an independent verification pass
  • Fair Trade USA Partner Portal search (certification_body)
    that the authoritative status lookup for the other main scheme renders a login screen, confirmed by direct fetch, so a claim under it cannot be resolved by any outside reader or automated check