Safety auditors in developing world are ‘cause for concern’

The competence of auditors assessing firms in developing countries continues to be a big concern for companies making use of third-party food safety certification schemes accredited under the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI)

Raising the competence of auditors who assess firms seeking certification to one of the 12 schemes now benchmarked and recognised under the GFSI is a central theme in the latest guidance document (version six, released in January).

"Our goal is to drive continuous improvement in food safety and food safety management systems and strengthen consumer confidence worldwide," said Catherine François, director of food safety programmes with the Consumer Goods Forum at last month's Global Food safety Conference, held in London.

Auditor competence "continues to be a concern", she said. But she added: "We must make sure that we can benchmark every step of the supply chain."

GFSI plans to extend its coverage to animal feed and packaging this year.

In recognition of how seriously auditor competence is considered, last September GFSI set up a working group to focus specifically on this issue. "The work plan for 2011 will focus on technical food safety competencies," said Bill McBride, md of Foodlink Management Services, based in Australia, and chairman of the working group.

Food and ingredients suppliers in countries such as China, India, the Middle East and eastern Europe, were proving particularly problematic as far as auditing was concerned, it emerged at the conference. It is not uncommon for documentation to be falsified for audits in some areas of the globe. But it isn't only auditor competence that poses an issue. In some countries firms view hygiene control procedures as an unnecessary cost burden while in others there are just too few sufficiently trained local auditors available to employ.

One initiative to emerge from GFSI, designed to raise global food safety standards, is to establish a two-tier approach to accreditation of suppliers: one designed to serve emerging markets locally, which although intended to progressively raise standards of food hygiene locally might not be sufficient to meet the regulatory controls within developed countries such as the EU, where a higher level of certification would be expected.

This proposal could go some way to meeting objections about third-party certification from bodies such as the World Trade Organisation, which has argued it presents a barrier to trade with developing countries.