|
|
 |
GFSI - How to effectively comply with Retailer’s standard
The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) was launched in May 2000.
Retailers accept certificates based on standards in order to be able to make an assessment of their suppliers of private-label products and fresh products and meat, to ensure that production is carried out in a safe manner. There are many of these standards and suppliers with many customers may be audited many times per year, at a high cost and with little added benefit.
The GFSI Guidance Document, contains commonly agreed criteria for food safety standards, against which any food or farm assurance standard can be benchmarked. GFSI does not undertake any accreditation or certification activities.
The benchmarking work undertaken by the standard owners and other key stakeholders on four food safety schemes SQF, BRC, IFS and Dutch HACCP has now reached a point of convergence. Each scheme has now aligned itself with common criteria defined by food safety experts from the food business, with the objective of making food manufacture as safe as possible.
Wal-Mart, Carrefour, Tesco, Metro, Migros, Ahold, and Delhaize have agreed to reduce duplication in the supply chain through the common acceptance of any of the four GFSI benchmarked schemes.
SGS has been approved by many Retailers to provide certification audit against GFSI recognized standards. Beside that SGS also provides training services to help the company to understand the standard requirements and be able to achieve the certification as planned.
|
