WWFs head of its European forest programme, Duncan Pollard, said the FSC was the only scheme credible enough to carry a consumer label.

The remark provoked an immediate response from the Confederation of European Paper Industries (CEPI), who claimed the comments were derogatory and unacceptable to the majority of paper producers.

CEPIs forest director Bernard de Galembert said: What we do not accept is that all companies who are not certified to FSC are looking to destroy forests. One cannot go that far.

WWF issued its comments following Forest and the European Union Resource Network (FERNs) report Footprints in the Forest, which examined eight certification schemes, including FSC and Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification schemes (PEFC).

The report declared that only the FSC demands the minimum thresholds a forest owner or company must meet before they get certified.

Pollard said: Companies who choose non-credible schemes undermine the very concept of certification.

There were huge variables between countries for PEFC he said, which had seen it become an umbrella organisation for weak and controversial schemes in the tropics that mean nothing.

Ideally we would all like companies to go for the most credible of schemes, said de Galembert.

The reality, he explains, is that those companies who embark on a certification process were taking sustainable forest management practices seriously.

At the moment de Galembert said there was not one overall system of forest certification. CEPI therefore promotes the mutual acceptance of the different schemes that currently exist.

by Andy Scott