I refer to the malaysiakini letter Why bother with ISO certification?

It should be known that the Standard and Industrial Research Institute of Malaysia or Sirim, (or more precisely Sirim Qas) issues the ISO 9000 certificates on the condition that their clients agree to not to hold them accountable for the endorsement of their client's operational conformity. The ISO 9001 refers to Quality Management System (QMS) certification.

This would mean that Sirim cannot be held responsible if its clients - for which it granted ISO 9000 certification - are unable to guarantee universal zero complaints for all products or services (which is part of the ISO 9001 requirement)

Sirim also builds in the same 'no accountability' clause into all its other certifications, eg, ISO 14001 for Environment Quality, IS0 18001 for Health and Occupational Safety, ISO 22000 for HACCP (food hygiene).

This 'not me' clause appears under Sec 6 (para 6.3) in the section entitled 'Liability and indemnity' in their agreement for product certification:

Sirim is not the only third-party Certification Body (CB) to play the certification game this very safe way at the expense of hapless consumers. Sirim's accreditors - the Department of Standards Malaysia (DSM) and the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) - and the relevant ministries need to be asked it they are aware of the former's smart legal tactics.

Then we need to ask the attorney-general whether there's criminality if a company or an organisation agrees to use a third-party CB that will not be responsible for its certificates (which that company or organisation will subsequently use as marketing tools).

For comparison, the Irish National Accreditation Board (INAB) requires CBs to be fully responsible for their work in line with Sec 5.1.1 of the ISO 17021:2006.

Slowly but surely, we consumers will catch up with these so-called 'quality assurance' tinker tailors, their accreditors and the ministries involved where else but in the courts.