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Importer Guide

Fake or Genuine? How to Check a Produce Inspection Report

Last updated: 11 September 2026 · By the FoodGate Audit inspection team (ISO 17020 accredited) · Get a free quote in 24h →

The report that reaches an importer is a PDF, and it usually arrives from the party whose goods it describes. What makes a genuine one checkable is a requirement of the standard inspection bodies are accredited to: ISO/IEC 17020 obliges the issuing body to keep a retrievable record of every report, traceable to the inspector who did the work. A genuine report can therefore be confirmed by its number with the body that issued it, and its dates, container and seal numbers, lot references and quantities can be reconciled with the packing list and the bill of lading. A document that was arranged rather than written on the day fails that arithmetic long before it fails on a signature.

Key Takeaways

The checks below are ordered by what they cost the buyer, which is nothing for the first four.

PointDetails
Confirm the number with the body, not the senderReach the issuing body through its accreditor's register and ask whether report number X was issued on date Y.
Reconcile dates before gradesInspection date, loading date and bill of lading date have to sit in an order that is physically possible.
Tie every identifier to this containerContainer number, seal number, lot references and carton counts must match the packing list, or the report describes something else.
Ask for the image files, not the PDFPhotographs embedded in a PDF have lost their file properties; the originals keep them.
Treat the laboratory page as a separate documentA residue result carries its laboratory name, sample identifier, substance list and reporting limit, or it is a summary rather than a result.

Table of Contents

What a genuine report has to carry

ISO/IEC 17020:2012, the edition in force until March 2026, lists in clause 7.4.2 the seven things a report must include. Each has a document on your side of the transaction to compare it with.

Required by clause 7.4.2What to compare it with
Identification of the issuing bodyThe accreditation body's public register entry for that body
Unique identification and date of issueThe body's own confirmation, requested by that number
Date or dates of inspectionLoading date, bill of lading date, phytosanitary certificate date
Identification of the items inspectedPacking list, container and seal numbers, lot references
Signature or other indication of approval by authorised personnelThe named inspector, whom the body can confirm was on site
A statement of conformity, where applicableYour own specification, not the supplier's
The inspection resultsThe photographs, and the laboratory report if residues were tested

Two neighbouring clauses do the rest. Clause 7.4.4 requires results supplied by subcontractors, which is what a laboratory is to an inspection body, to be clearly identified as such. Clause 7.4.5 requires any correction or addition made after issue to be recorded and justified, so a revised report exists as a recorded revision, not as a second file under the same number. A third edition of the standard has since replaced the 2012 text, a change our article on ISO 17020 accreditation covers.

The check that costs nothing

Clause 7.4.1 requires the work of an inspection body to be covered by a retrievable report, clause 7.3.1 a record system that allows the inspection to be evaluated afterwards, and clause 7.3.2 that the report be traceable to the inspector who performed it. A genuine report therefore exists twice: as the PDF you were sent, and in the issuing body's records under its unique number, where anyone holding the number and the date of issue can ask about it.

How you reach the body is the detail that matters: a telephone number printed on the report is part of the document you are trying to verify. The address to use is the one in the public register of the accreditation body that accredited the inspection body, published by the organisation that did the assessing rather than the one being assessed. Reading that register, scope included, is the whole of the article linked above. Once the body confirms that number X was issued on date Y for a consignment at that packhouse, the document has passed the one test a PDF editor cannot beat.

Where dates and identifiers give a report away

A report written on the day of loading was written after the container was stuffed and sealed, so it can only carry the seal number that is on the door. A document prepared in advance, or adapted from an earlier consignment, carries whatever seal number it was given, and the two disagree more often than signatures do. The inspection cannot postdate the bill of lading, because the goods had left. A residue result cannot predate the sampling that produced it. A report issued weeks before loading describes fruit that has since been in cold storage, repacked or replaced: a genuine report about a different consignment.

Clause 7.2.1 requires the body to identify inspected items and samples uniquely, so that a result cannot be confused between lots. On a produce report that shows up as lot or pallet references, carton counts and marks, which have to be the ones on the packing list and on the phytosanitary certificate for the same container. A report that inspects 20 pallets of oranges with no lot reference, no grower code and no pallet count matching the loading plan has not identified anything.

Pro Tip: before reading a single grade, put the report's container and seal numbers next to the bill of lading and the loading photograph, then put the inspection date next to the booking. A report that survives those two comparisons was written on the day, about this container; one that does not has told you what it is, whatever the grades say.

Photographs, and what a PDF hides

A photograph pasted into a PDF has been reduced to pixels. The original file carries the camera's own timestamp and, where the device records it, the location, and those properties turn a picture into evidence. Ask for the image files: a body that took them has no reason to withhold them.

Read the set as a set. The container number should be legible in one frame and the seal in another, the carton marks and lot labels in the close-ups, and the fruit in the defect shots should be the fruit on those pallets: same variety, same packaging, same light. Timestamps should span the inspection, not a burst of three minutes, and that consistency across forty frames is what a file assembled from other consignments finds hardest to arrange.

The laboratory page is a different document

Residue results are not produced by the inspection body but by a laboratory, whose own accreditation, where it holds one, is granted under a different standard, ISO/IEC 17025; clause 7.4.4 requires an inspection report that includes them to identify them as subcontracted results. On a genuine report that shows up as a laboratory name, a sample identifier matching the sample the inspector drew, the method, the list of substances it screens for, and the reporting limit for each.

Our published EU notification record shows why the substance list is the line to read. Counted on 11 September 2026 from the 535 EU RASFF notifications on Egyptian fruit, vegetables, herbs and spices filed between 28 November 2019 and 31 August 2026, 453 carry at least one hazard tagged as a pesticide residue. Counting distinct residue labels on each of those 453 records, after removing the "unauthorised substance" qualifier the database appends to some of them:

Residue labels on the recordNotifications
One317
Two or more136
Three or more68
Ten or more19

The largest single record names 19 substances on one consignment of vine leaves, notified by Belgium on 21 September 2023, and the file as a whole carries 109 distinct residue labels, a count that still includes a few spelling variants. A laboratory line that reads "chlorpyrifos: not detected" has looked for one of them. It is a true statement about one substance and silent on the other 108, and three in ten of the residue notifications in this file name more than one substance, which no single-line result could have covered. Our guide to EU residue limits on Egyptian produce covers the limits themselves. A laboratory result without a scope list is a summary someone wrote, and a summary is exactly what a PDF is good at.

Why "is it fake?" is the wrong question

The framing of fraud sends buyers looking for forged signatures and edited logos, and that is the rarest failure on the file. The common one involves no forgery at all: a genuine report, issued by a real body, about a consignment that is not the one in the container. An earlier lot from the same packhouse, an inspection done at intake three weeks before loading, a sample drawn from the pallets nearest the door. Every comparison above catches that case, because a genuine report about the wrong goods fails on the same dates and identifiers.

The second common case is the genuine report read as saying more than it says. A certificate that carries a conformity statement and no results is allowed under clause 7.4.3, provided the body can also produce the full report and the two are traceable to each other; presented on its own, it invites the reader to assume a scope that may have been one substance and one pallet. A visual grading report is read as a residue clearance. None of that requires anyone to have lied, and all of it ends the same way at the border as a fabricated file. The question that protects an importer is whether the document describes this container, on this date, against this specification.

What commissioning the report yourself changes

A report from the seller has to be verified because every identifier on it was chosen without you. A report you commission runs the other way: the inspection order names the container, the lot references and the specification, the report that comes back answers to that order, and the photographs and sampling records are produced for the party the border authority will hold responsible. The comparisons above still apply, with your documents on both sides of them.

FoodGate Audit is accredited to ISO 17020 by the Egyptian Accreditation Council for the inspection of Egyptian fruit and vegetables, and it inspects rather than certifies: its output is a finding against your specification, and it holds no interest of any kind in the goods it examines. Its pre-shipment inspection reports carry timestamped photographs of every pallet, label and defect, the measured data behind the grades, and a pass or fail conclusion delivered within 24 hours; a redacted sample report shows the layout. Independence once the work is in the packhouse has its own page, and the contact page is where an inspection order starts. Whatever a supplier sends you afterwards can then be read against a document you already hold.

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FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Can I ask an inspection body to confirm a report I did not commission?

Yes, within limits: whether a report with that number and date of issue exists in the body's records, and whether it concerns a consignment at that site. The body may decline to share the contents with anyone other than its client, but existence and date are not confidential.

Is a certificate that carries no results a red flag on its own?

Not on its own. ISO/IEC 17020:2012 allowed a body to issue a certificate without results, provided it could also produce the full inspection report and the two were traceable to each other. The flag goes up when the full report is asked for and does not arrive, or arrives under a different number.

How old can an inspection report be and still describe my consignment?

There is no fixed rule. An inspection carried out before the container was stuffed cannot carry the seal number, and one carried out weeks before loading describes fruit that has since been stored or repacked. The closer the inspection date sits to the loading date on the bill of lading, the more the report is about the container that sailed.

Does a genuine inspection report guarantee the container will clear the border?

No. An inspection examines the goods presented on the day against a specification, using a sample. It lowers the chance of a finding at the border and documents what was loaded; it does not remove a risk that lives in the part of the lot nobody sampled.

Sources

Prevent the Rejection Before It Ships

ISO 17020-accredited inspection and MRL sampling at Egyptian packhouses. Scheduled within 48 hours, reports within 24 hours.

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