CAIBOK — recognition of prior qualifications

Version 1.0 · 2026-07-23. Public policy.

If you already hold a culinary or food-safety qualification, this policy explains what CAIBOK will and will not do with it — including the qualifications we decline to recognise, and why.

What recognition is, and is not

Recognition earns you the right to challenge an exam. It never awards a credential.

A recognised qualification can let you skip preparation and sit an assessment directly, or sit a shorter form of it. It does not hand you a belt.

Three rules that never bend:

1. No qualification ever waives a CAIBOK capstone. The capstone is where the certification decision is made. Everyone sits it.
2. No qualification waives the food-handler currency requirement (White Belt) or belt order.
3. Credit is granted per pillar, never per belt. A qualification strong in cookery earns credit in cookery and nothing elsewhere.

We map on what was actually assessed and on scope of accountability — never on a job title, and never on a national framework level number.

The routes

How decisions are made

Against a published schedule, not case by case. Discretionary grants are not permitted: if your qualification is on the schedule, you get exactly what the schedule says; if it is not, it is assessed against these criteria and the outcome is added to the schedule.

We assess: - what was actually assessed (written? practical? observed in a workplace?); - the scope of accountability the qualification implies (station / shift / kitchen); - currency — competence evidence within 5 years, food-safety currency within 3; - independence — was the assessment independent of the person's own employer?

We do not assess the prestige of the awarding body, its country, or its marketing.

Two traps we deliberately avoid

Job titles do not travel. The same role is pitched at different framework levels in different countries, and the same words mean different ranks. "CCC" is the American Culinary Federation's Certified Chef de Cuisine (mid-ladder, ≈ Red) and the Canadian CCFCC's Certified Chef de Cuisine (top of that ladder, ≈ Black). Same acronym, two belts apart. Our schedule keys on the awarding body, never the acronym.

Qualification codes change. Australia, Portugal, Spain, New Zealand, England and France have all restructured recently. The schedule therefore records a qualification by name, awarding body and award date — never by a hard-coded code that will silently go stale.

Practical evidence and the supervisor attestation

CAIBOK's written examinations do not attest hands-on ability (see the scope statements). Where a belt requires practical assurance, that is normally a supervisor attestation.

Route C5 recognises that an independently-assessed practical is better evidence than an attestation signed by the candidate's own manager. Qualifications with a substantial, externally assessed practical component can therefore substitute for the attestation.

A written-only qualification never substitutes for a practical. However prestigious it is, a written exam is not evidence of hands-on capability.

Published refusals (C0)

Publishing refusals is what makes the grants meaningful. A schedule that recognises everything recognises nothing.

We decline to recognise:

• Qualifications containing no culinary or food-safety assessment, however senior. A general hospitality-business qualification does not touch a belt, because the belts certify kitchen practice. Example: Austria's Befähigungsprüfung Gastgewerbe contains no cookery assessment and cannot map to any belt.
• Attendance and completion certificates. A certificate of completion records that someone finished a course; it is not an assessment. This includes Black Belt Chef's own certificates of completion — our affiliated training company gets no privilege here.
• Qualifications with no independent assessment — where the training provider assessed its own learners with no external verification.
• Self-declared or purchased credentials, including any credential awarded without assessment.
• Expired qualifications outside the currency windows, unless accompanied by evidence of continuous practice.
• Membership of a professional body. Membership is not assessment.

A refusal is a statement about evidence, not about the holder's ability. Anyone refused recognition may still earn any CAIBOK credential by the ordinary route.

Coverage, honestly stated

The schedule currently covers qualifications from Europe, North America, Australasia, Japan and South Africa.

⚠️ It does not yet adequately cover Latin America, India or Singapore. Those are live markets for CAIBOK, so candidates will arrive holding qualifications we have not yet assessed. Until that research is complete, such qualifications are handled case by case against the criteria above, and each decision is added to the published schedule. We would rather admit the gap than pretend the schedule is complete.

Appeals

A recognition decision may be appealed under the Discipline and Appeals Procedure (caibok.org/ethics#discipline). Appeals are decided by people not involved in the original decision.

Independence

Recognition is never sold, and no commercial relationship — including with Black Belt Chef — affects a recognition decision. See the Commercial Firewall Policy v1.0 and /independence.

Review

Reviewed at least annually and whenever a national qualification framework changes materially. The schedule itself is maintained continuously; this policy governs how it is built.

Related: CAIBOK-SCOPE-STATEMENTS.md · CAIBOK-ANCHOR-ELECTIVE-POLICY.md · JTA-RECOGNITION-POLICY.md (internal research) · CAIBOK-GOV-001.