Over the past few years, certification standards have become increasingly relevant for the agribusiness sector. Substantial parts of the value chain are already certified by standards such as QS, IFS or EurepGap. It is not known, however, whether these approaches can actually ensure a high quality control. This article is based on the analysis of the data base of the QSsystem with more than 72,000 companies involved. It tries to deduce some first empirically rich hypotheses about the connection between auditing quality and the institutional framing of the certification.