What the marks mean
A short, honest list rather than a badge wall.
Flatware is a lightly regulated category, and any site showing you a wall of badges is stretching. Here is what genuinely applies.
Food-contact rules
Anything sold in the United States that touches food has to satisfy the FDA rules for food-contact materials. The stainless grades used in flatware are long-established food-contact alloys, so the category rarely carries a specific certificate: compliance is the baseline for being on sale at all.
The alloy family
18/10 and 18/8 sit in the Type 304 family, the same austenitic stainless specified for commercial kitchen equipment because of how it handles salt and acid. 18/0 is Type 430, a ferritic stainless that is equally food-safe and less costly.
Dishwasher rating
This is a manufacturer rating rather than a certification, and it is the one people actually check. 280 of the pieces listed here state dishwasher-safe on the listing.
California Proposition 65
Goods sold into California must warn about listed substances. Plain stainless flatware ordinarily carries no such warning, which is itself a useful signal when comparing listings.