What does standardisation mean?

"The purpose of standardisation is to supply reference documents containing solutions to technical and commercial problems concerning products, goods and services that occur repeatedly in the relationships between economic, scientific, technical and social partners" (extract from Decree n°84-74 dated 26 January 1984).

What is a standard?

A standard is "a document established by consensus that provides for common and repeated use, rules, guidelines or characteristics for activities or their results, aimed at the achievement of the optimum degree of order in a given context" (extract from ISO/IEC 2 Guide).

What use does a standard serve?

A standard proposes solutions for technical and commercial questions concerning products, durable goods and services. It establishes a compromise between the technical situation and economic constraints at a given moment. A standard represents a given know-how and technology.

What standards do we use?

The standards we use in the cutlery industry enable us to ensure that our knives satisfy performance requirements recognised by everybody. We use three standards above all:

• European standard EN ISO 8442-1: materials in contact with foodstuffs – Cutlery and table hollowware.
Part 1: Requirements for cutlery for the preparation of food.
This standard covers a series of requirements relating to the appearance of a knife, its cutting edge, corrosion resistance, the resistance of the "handle-knife" assembly, mechanical resistance of the blade, the hardness of the blade steel, mechanical and heat resistance of plastic handles, resistance to dropping, and the marking and labelling.
This standard also contains test methods for assessing corrosion resistance, the rigidity of the plastic materials and their resistance to softening.

• European standard CEN Pr 28 442-5 (in process of final validation) gives the principles for testing the cutting performance and underlining the parameters to be measured and the minimum values to be obtained.

• French standard NF A35-595 which applies to production, the chemical and mechanical characteristics, dimension tolerances and checks on stainless steel grades used for cutlery.

There are other standards used in the field of cutlery and table utensils, but that do not apply to kitchen knives. One of these applies notably to the method of production, the chemical and mechanical characteristics and the dimension tolerances for carbon steel (NF A 35-596), which we do not use for our standard ranges.

To learn more and have access to all the standards, consult the AFNOR web site by clicking on www.afnor.fr