USDA Renews Safety Equipment Institute Contract To Manage Biobased Certification Program

On September 1, 2016, the Safety Equipment Institute (SEI) announced that it was selected to manage the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Biobased Certification Program for the next five years. SEI is a subsidiary of ASTM International (ASTM), and has previously held the five-year contract with USDA to administer the USDA certification program that labels products as "biobased." This announcement comes on the heels of an update of ASTM's test method (D6866), that determines "biobased content of solid, liquid, and gaseous samples using radiocarbon analysis," and is used by USDA's BioPreferred^® Program.