What is GFSI:

The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) co-ordinated by The Consumer Goods Forum, was launched in May 2000.

The GFSI Mission is :

Continuous improvement in food safety management sytems to ensure confidence in the delivery of safe food to consumers

The GFSI Objectives are to :

1. Convergence between food safety standards through maintaining a benchmarking process for food safety management schemes.

2. Improve cost efficiency throughout the food supply chain through the common acceptance of GFSI recognised standards by retailers around the world.

3. Provide a unique international stakeholder platform for networking, knowledge exchange and sharing of best food safety practices and information.

How is the Global Food Safety Initiative adding value to the Supply Chain ?

Under the umbrella of the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), 7 major retailers have come to a common acceptance of four GFSI benchmarked food safety schemes.

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 Version 5 (released September 2007), 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 (BRC, IFS, Dutch HACCP and SQF) 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. As a result, this will also drive cost efficiency in the supply chain and reduce the duplication of audits.

The GFSI vision of ‘once certified, accepted everywhere’ has now become a reality. Carrefour, Tesco, Metro, Migros, Ahold, Wal-Mart and Delhaize have agreed to reduce duplication in the supply chain through the common acceptance of any of the four GFSI benchmarked schemes.