The 2019 CIBJO Congress which is concluding today in Bahrain decided to set up a new committee within the organisation dedicated to establishing operating practices that are specific to the laboratory-grown diamond trade. CIBJO President Gaetano Cavalieri said that the lab-grown diamond committee would draw up a proposal for a set of working rules that will enable the natural and laboratory-grown diamond sectors to work alongside each other, enabling both to grow and flourish, not at the expense of the other, while maintaining the consumer’s trust and confidence. “Unnecessary effort and time have been wasted through mutual recrimination, and it ultimately it is in the interests of all sides to develop a mutually agreed-to framework that would prevent problematic incidents, such as the mixing of parcels of natural and laboratory-grown diamonds without disclosing the fact to consumers,” Cavalieri added, emphasising the need “to reach a modus operandi that is acceptable to all”. The Laboratory-Grown Diamond Committee will operate under the umbrella of the CIBJO’s Diamond Commission and will be created from an ad hoc working group which was established at the 2018 CIBJO Congress in Colombia. It comprised CIBJO officers and officials, as well as representatives of the laboratory-grown diamond sector, the natural diamond sector and a leading gemmological laboratory. During the Congress, a guidance document prepared by the Working Group was presented and widely discussed at a special meeting convened for the purpose. At the session, the head of the Working Group, Wesley Hunt of the De Beers Group emphasized that the document was purely a draft for full and complete consultation by CIBJO members. “The primary goal is to protect consumer confidence,” he stated. Hunt explained that, in the Group’s opinion, “the consumer must receive complete and unambiguous information about what they are buying (i.e. a natural diamond or a laboratory-grown diamond), so that they can make a consciously informed purchasing decision.” He added moreover that “such principles should be carried out with mutual consideration by all sides, so as not to harm the natural or laboratory-grown diamond sectors in marketing their respective products”. In addition to Hunt, the working group included Gaetano Cavalieri, CIBJO President; Thierry Silber, Madestone; Andrey Zharkov, Ultra C; Jean-Marc Lieberherr, Diamond Producers Assocation (DPA); and Daniel Nyfeler, Gübelin Gem Lab. Steven Benson, CIBJO’s Communications Director, provided support. The group held regular conference calls over a 10-month period, and it met face-to-face twice in Milan on two occasions. Over this period the draft document was created. International Grown Diamond Association Secretary-General Dick Garard was invited to speak on the subject. “We think the US Federal Trade Commission guidelines enable both natural and LGD to exist. We hope that a document will be produced that can take this issue forward”, he said. WFDB President Ernie Blom raised three concerns during the discussion. These were “the way that the synthetic manufacturers are running down the diamond industry; the potentially huge problem where unethical behavior could create problems with consumers who might one day sell an item set with diamonds and find out that they are synthetics; and a new issue where synthetics might be grown around naturals. Does that mean there will be a day when we won’t be able to detect these stones?” Earlier, at the Diamond Commission meeting, most members called for clear sets of rules that clearly followed the CIBJO Nomenclature. Some members opined that though LGDs are a separate product with a future, the rules should be iterated as an annex to the Diamond Blue Book and not as a separate one. Summing up the deliberations, Udi Sheintal, President of the Diamond Commission said that there was need for a “constant dialogue between the Diamond Commission and the Laboratory-Grown Diamond Working Group”.