01The certification that does not exist
I get asked for FDA-certified pallets several times a year. There is no such thing. No United States agency certifies wood pallets as food-grade, and no scheme issues a badge you can point at.
What schemes like BRCGS and SQF actually require is that you control your packaging materials — that you have a specification, a supplier who meets it, and records demonstrating conformance. The pallet is not certified; your process is audited. Anyone selling you a certificate for the pallet has misunderstood the requirement, or is hoping you have.
02What actually gets written up
- Visible mould or staining on a top deck. The most common finding by a wide margin. Almost always cosmetic mould shadow — dead organism, remaining stain — and it fails anyway.
- Protruding fasteners. A safety and foreign-body finding, and a fair one.
- Splinters and loose boards in areas where product is handled open.
- No documented supplier control. No specification, or a specification nobody can produce.
- Pest evidence — frass, exit holes. Rare in treated wood, more common in outdoor-stored stock.
- Inadequate segregation between raw-material and finished-goods pallets, in schemes that require it.
03The control that prevents most of it
Almost every finding above is prevented by two things: a moisture specification and an appearance sort.
- Specify heat treated stock. Treatment drops moisture to 15–20%, below the mould growth threshold, at $1.10–$1.90 per pallet.
- Or kiln dried with a certificate where a customer requires documented moisture content.
- Add an A-clean appearance clause — no stain, mould shadow, paint or raised splinters on the top deck. About $1.40 per pallet.
- Specify covered storage at both ends, in writing. Most mould we investigate is a storage problem, not a supply problem.
- Keep the specification and the delivery declarations. That is the evidence the auditor is actually looking for.
04Where wood stops being acceptable
| Zone | Pallet | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Ambient dry goods warehouse | Grade A recycled wood | Standard, widely accepted |
| Production, closed product | Heat treated wood | Moisture control |
| Wash-down processing | Plastic | Wood absorbs and holds water |
| Open food contact | Plastic | Regulatory and practical |
| Chilled with condensation cycling | Heat treated or plastic | Repeated surface moisture |
| Retail display | A-clean or new | The shopper sees it |
The dividing line is moisture and contact, not a general prejudice against wood. Full sector detail on the food and beverage page, and the mould mechanism is covered in an earlier piece.
05Preparing for the audit itself
- Have the written pallet specification to hand, not on someone's laptop.
- Have the supplier's declaration for recent deliveries.
- Have heat treatment or moisture certificates where the specification calls for them.
- Walk the pallet storage area yourself the week before and look at the top decks.
- Know where your pallets are stored at the supplier end, and be able to say so.
Five things, none of them expensive. The failures I see are almost never a supply failure — they are a documentation failure discovered on the morning of an audit.
