Certified Vegan vs Plant-Based vs Self-Declared

Certified vegan means an independent body verified the product against a published standard and stands behind a certificate. "Plant-based" is a marketing term with no fixed legal definition in most markets. Self-declared vegan is your own assertion, verified by no one. Buyers, marketplaces and AI search engines increasingly rank these by one test: can the claim be checked? Certification is the only one of the three built to be checked.