Advisory

Is this coffee shade grown, and is that the same as bird friendly?

ALS-COFFEE-1.3-BIRD-001

This question is worth asking but is not reducible to a check a page can settle. It is published as guidance, not as a test.

Assertion

shade_habitat_scheme_membership resolves_against_register true

Applicability

applies when
the page makes a shade-grown, bird-friendly or habitat claim
signal
shade or habitat language in product text

Accepted evidence

  • external_register — the farm on the certifier's public certified-farms list, the importer on its certified-importers list, or the roaster and this named product in its buy-online directory
  • product_description — the named scheme and the current mark, distinct from generic shade language

Explicitly insufficient evidence

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

  • "shade grown", "canopy grown", "grown under native shade"
    None is the certification, and this is the highest-volume near-miss in coffee because it describes exactly the practice the certification measures.
  • a different sustainability seal offered as equivalent
    The main alternative scheme has no shade requirement at all, so the substitution swaps a real habitat claim for a weaker and different one.
  • an older version of the mark
    Superseded seals remain in circulation, so the mark's version is part of what a reader has to check.
  • a certified farm named while the roaster holds no seal-use agreement
    The certifier requires a signed agreement plus periodic volume reporting from the roaster, so farm certification alone does not authorise a seal on a retail bag.
  • "supports migratory birds" or donation language
    A contribution is not a habitat property of this coffee.
  • absence from the public list read as absence of certification
    The lists carry no dates or status fields, so a match is good evidence while a non-match is no evidence.

Conflict rules

  • When the roaster appears in the buy-online directory but this product does not — then record the roaster-level match and state that it does not reach this product, because the directory names specific products

Discrimination

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

Very few coffee pages carry this specific scheme, while generic shade language is common, so an assertion demanding the scheme would fail for nearly every page making a habitat claim. Published as advisory so the shade-versus-scheme distinction is on record.

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.

For a shopper

Shade grown describes a farming practice that no one audits; the habitat scheme that does audit it maintains public lists of certified farms, importers and even specific products you can search yourself. The better-known green seal has no shade requirement.

For a merchant

Name the habitat scheme and use its current mark rather than generic shade language, and where you hold a seal-use agreement, make the certified farm or importer identifiable so a reader can find it in the public lists.

Grounding