Processing giants spearhead global food safety scheme
A food safety scheme, backed by four of the world's biggest food manufacturers, could soon be competing with major international retailer-led third-party certification programmes for the whole supply chain.
Being manufacturer led, it would - if approved by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) - affect the thousands of suppliers to Nestlé, Unilever, Kraft and Danone, which support the scheme. It could eventually result suppliers along the supply chain - including suppliers of ingredients, packaging, services and logistics firms - signing up to the scheme.
The need for the standard gained weight last month when Kellogg's president David Mackay called for a universal food safety benchmark for evaluating food manufacturing facilities.
Mackay made the call while giving evidence to a US House of Representatives committee looking into January's Salmonella Typhimurium outbreak linked to peanut processor Peanut Corporation of America. The incident caused hundreds of cases of food poisoning and eight deaths, and cost Kellogg between $60-70M in product recalls.
The GFSI is designed to harmonise the existing major retailer-led certification schemes: British Retail Consortium (BRC), International Food Safety (IFS), Safe Quality Food (SQF) and Dutch Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP).
The new FSSC 22000 - Food Safety System Certification scheme is also supported by The Confederation of the Food and Drink Industries of the EU (CIAA). It is undergoing benchmarking to comply with GFSI requirements.
"This is obviously going to be very big," said one well-informed industry source. "What it will do is kick GFSI recognised standards up the supply chain. What the bigger companies want is confidence in systems.
"All the big manufacturing companies are running their own systems; it is a very costly exercise and there is no reason for them to do that. The food manufacturing industry has been waiting for this for a long time."
FSSC 22000 is now owned by Dutch HACCP and if it is approved by the GFSI Board in May could replace the existing Dutch HACCP scheme, which according to the source "wasn't going anywhere". It is based on the ISO 22000 standard for food quality. But it makes use of Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 220, a pre-requisite programme (PRP) necessary for it to meet GFSI scheme requirements for product certification rather than just quality management certification.
At a meeting in Paris with Dutch HACCP last month, the GFSI benchmarking committee - including retail and manufacturing representatives - asked for more clarity on FSSC 22000. Once its questions are satisfactorily answered, the committee will prepare a report for consideration at the GFSI Board meeting in May.
