Mounted search and rescue

[Una Smith <una.smith@att.net>]

Tm' Fi wrote:
>ASTM is not a national standard to anyone but themselves.

Although I quote Tomi` here, I am writing this to everyone
here who is not familiar with ASTM (http://www.astm.org).

Tomi` and I agree that being published by ASTM does not in
any way make a standard "national".  But ASTM itself makes
no such claim.  ASTM claims to be, and is, an international
organization:  its membership is open internationally and
many committees have significant non-US memberships.  (F32
on Search and Rescue has a few non-US members, by the way,
and would eagerly welcome more.)

Judging by its magazine, ASTM is proud of its special role
as a publisher of *voluntary consensus* standards developed
by stakeholder communities in a process that is bottom-up
rather than top-down.  That role is very different from the
role of most standards development organizations, which are
government agencies and typically very top-down.  Standards
developed by such organizations often are national standards,
by law.

An ASTM standard becomes a formal national or international
standard if and only if it is adopted by one or more national
governments.  It becomes a de facto national or international
standard if and only if the majority of the user community 
accept and adopt it as such.

The MSAR task group within ASTM Committee F32 on Search and
Rescue has its own e-mail discussion group, MSAR-ASTM:

        http://www.ibiblio.org/msar/msar-astm.html

Hope this helps,

        Una Smith
        New Mexico