Forestry Tasmania Preliminary FSC Assessment: I am outraged!

I just read this section in the Forestry Tasmania Preliminary FSC Assessment and I am absolutely outraged!

http://www.scsglobalservices.com/files/resources/talking_points_for_forestry_tasmania_initiative-042514.pdf

Can a company that operates at a loss achieve certification?

The FSC certification standard requires that a forest management entity have sufficient financial resources to manage the defined forest area in conformance with the full scope of the standard. The standard does not require that the certified forest is managed at a profit provided that other sources of working capital are available and sufficient to enable management in conformance with the standard.

Growing trees for wood production is a business. It is NOT a community service.

Forestry Tasmania competes in the marketplace against private tree growers who do not have the option of running at a loss. Nor do they have access to unlimited continuous taxpayer bailouts.

To grant Forestry Tasmania FSC Certification on the basis that they can continue to commercially disadvantage private tree growers and hence destroy the commercial value of those forests is just extraordinary.

For myself I am trying to build a farm-based Tasmanian blackwood growers cooperative. Current Tasmanian State forest policy and practice directly inhibit this from happening. One of the many reasons for this is that Forestry Tasmania deliberately runs its blackwood operations at a loss.

And you come along and say this is a good outcome??

Please explain!

Yours in considerable anger,

Dr Gordon Bradbury