Global Food Safety Initiative

The Global Food Safety Initiative is a business-driven initiative for the continuous improvement of food safety management systems to ensure confidence in the delivery of safe food to consumers worldwide. GFSI provides a platform for collaboration between some of the world's leading food safety experts from retailer, manufacturer and food service companies, service providers associated with the food supply chain, international organizations, academia and government.

The initiative was launched in 2000 following a number of food safety crises when consumer confidence was at an all-time low. Since then, experts from all over the world have been collaborating in numerous Technical Working Groups to tackle current food safety issues defined by GFSI stakeholders.

Key activities within GFSI include the definition of food safety requirements for food safety schemes through a benchmarking process. This process is thought to lead to recognition of existing food safety schemes and enhances confidence, acceptance and implementation of third party certification along the entire food supply chain.

GFSI's current focus is on extending the requirements to cover all scopes of the global food supply chain "from farm to fork". Other important current activities include the development of a capacity building programme for small and/or less developed businesses to facilitate their access to local markets and a continuous focus on food safety auditor competence to bring industry experts in collaboration with key stakeholders to a common consensus on the skills, knowledge and attributes that a competent auditor should possess.

Within GFSI, benchmarking is a “procedure by which a food safety-related scheme is compared to the GFSI Guidance Document".[3]

Back in 2000, food safety was a top of mind issue for companies due to several high-profile recalls, quarantines and negative publicity about the food industry. There was also extensive audit fatigue through the industry, as retailers performed inspections or audits themselves or asked a third party to do this on their behalf. These were often carried out against food safety schemes that lacked international certification and accreditation, resulting in incomparable auditing results.

CEOs of global companies came together at The Consumer Goods Forum (CIES at the time) and agreed that consumer trust needed to be strengthened and maintained through a safer supply chain. GFSI was created to achieve this through the harmonisation of food safety standards that would help reduce audit duplication throughout the supply chain. At the time, there was no existing scheme that could be qualified as “global” that could be adopted by all. GFSI therefore chose to go down the route of benchmarking, developing a model that determines equivalency between existing food safety schemes, whilst leaving flexibility and choice in the marketplace.

This benchmarking model is based on the GFSI Guidance Document, a multi-stakeholder document that was drafted with input from food safety experts from all over the world, and defines the process by which food safety schemes may gain recognition by GFSI and gives guidance to these schemes. GFSI drives continuous improvement through the Guidance Document, which is updated on a regular basis with global industry input to ensure that the requirements for food safety management schemes are robust. GFSI does not undertake any certification or accreditation activities.

The GFSI objectives are to:

• Reduce food safety risks by delivering equivalence and convergence between effective food safety management systems
• Manage cost in the global food system by eliminating redundancy and improving operational efficiency
• Develop competencies and capacity building in food safety to create consistent and effective global food systems
• Provide a unique international stakeholder platform for collaboration, knowledge exchange and networking[4]

GFSI has recognized a number of food safety management schemes that fulfill the criteria of the GFSI Guidance Document. The GFSI Guidance Document is regularly revised by GFSI to reflect improvements in best practices. GFSI is not a scheme in itself and does not carry out any accreditation or certification activities.

The status of recognition is achieved through a comprehensive benchmarking process.[5] Once a standard has gained formal recognition by the GFSI Board of Directors, this standard is deemed to meet all of the requirements in the Guidance Document.

Certification according to a GFSI recognized scheme can be achieved through a successful third party audit against any of the following schemes recognized by the GFSI:

• BRC Global Standard for Food Safety (Seventh Edition)
• BRC Global Standard for Packaging and Packaging Materials Issue 6
• BRC Global Standard for Storage and Distribution
• BRC Global Standard for Food Safety, Issue 8 (as of February 1, 2019)
• CanadaGAP (Canadian Horticultural Council On-Farm Food Safety Program) [6]
• FSSC 22000 (Food Safety Systems Certification Scheme)[7] Food Products
• Global Aquaculture Alliance Seafood - BAP Seafood Processing Standard
• GLOBALG.A.P. Integrated Farm Assurance Scheme Version 5, Product Safety Standard Version 4 and Harmonized Produce Safety Standard
• Global Red Meat Standard (GRMS) 4th Edition 4.1
• IFS[8] Food Version 6
• IFS Logistics Version 2.1
• IFS PACsecure, Version 1
• PrimusGFS Standard (v.2.1 - December 2011)
• SQF Safe Quality Food Code 7th Edition Level 2 (Expired as of January 2, 2018)
• SQF Safe Quality Food Code 8th Edition (as of January 2, 2018)
• SQF Safe Quality Food Code 8.1 Edition since October 1, 2019

Under the umbrella of GFSI, eight major retailers (Carrefour, Tesco, ICA, Metro, Migros, Ahold, Wal-Mart and Delhaize) came to a common acceptance of the GFSI benchmarked food safety schemes in June 2007.[9]

• The Consumer Goods Forum
• The Global Food Safety Initiative