Good quality, healthy planting stock is the cornerstone of a sustainable industry. Therefore seed certification systems have been introduced to assure ‘minimum quality’, and for disease control. The disease control aspect has relevance for biosecurity and phytosanitary certification of quarantine regulated pests and diseases as well as non-quarantine pests and diseases. Seed potato certification used to be delivered by state departments of agriculture as a service to their potato industry. Over the past 10 – 15 years, state governments have reduced services to agriculture and stepped back from all or most of seed potato certification services, depending on state department preferences. This development was a driver for the formulation of a National Seed Potato Certification Standard; the approved version was last published in 2007. Still, several regional or state based approaches to seed potato certification or quality management developed side by side to address the seed industry’s requirements for certification services.