PARIS and COLOGNE — The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), The Consumer Goods Forum’s Coalition of Action on food safety, and GLOBALG.A.P. c/o FoodPLUS GmbH, a global organization offering a set of standards for good agricultural practices (G.A.P.), are pleased to announce that GLOBALG.A.P. has successfully achieved recognition against GFSI’s Benchmarking Requirements Version 2020.1. The recognition encompasses Produce Handling Assurance (PHA) certification program.
The PHA certification program is available to on-farm and stand-alone post-harvest handling facilities around the world. It provides food safety management certification of post-harvest activities, such as cooling, packing, re-packing, handling, and storage of crops for consumption. The PHA certification program incorporates United States Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) requirements from both the Produce Safety Rule and the Preventive Controls for Human Food Rule, where applicable.
“PHA allows GLOBALG.A.P. to extend exceptional food safety assurance to both field and facility” said Kristian Moeller, Managing Director at GLOBALG.A.P. c/o FoodPLUS GmbH and President of GLOBALG.A.P. North America, Inc. “We are pleased to now offer PHA as a GFSI benchmarked standard, alongside the Integrated Farm Assurance (IFA) and Harmonized Produce Safety Standard (HPSS) certification programs for farms.”
Giovanna Ordonez, GFSI Senior Technical Manager, The Consumer Goods Forum, said, “Version 2020.1 is the most robust GFSI Benchmarking Requirements yet, so it’s great to see CPOs like GLOBAL.G.A.P. continue to help the food industry raise the bar on food safety. The GFSI Benchmarking Requirements are the most widely-recognised in the industry and that’s in part thanks to the collaborative nature of our work and the broader GFSI community”.
About the GFSI Benchmarking Process
Benchmarking is a procedure by which a food safety Certification Program Owner (CPO) is compared to the GFSI Benchmarking Requirements. The process is designed to be executed in an independent, unbiased, technically proficient and transparent manner. A program is ‘recognised’ by GFSI when it has been verified that it meets every single GFSI benchmarking requirement, both in procedures and in operations. An independent benchmark leader, supported by the GFSI Technical Manager, assesses whether the application meets GFSI requirements, followed by a public consultation period that is open to all GFSI Stakeholders. The benchmark leader and GFSI Technical Manager then make a recommendation to the GFSI Steering Committee regarding recognition of the programme. The full process is defined in the GFSI Benchmarking Requirements document.
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About GFSI
The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI; the Coalition) is a CEO-led Coalition of Action from The Consumer Goods Forum, bringing together 34 retailers and manufacturers and an extended food safety community to help oversee food safety standards for businesses and help provide access to safe food for people everywhere. As one of the world’s largest networks to help achieve safe food , GFSI is committed to making food safety everyone’s business and the Coalition members are addressing challenges facing food safety systems in their supply chains and the markets they operate in, and are helping to raise the food safety bar globally. Its ambition is to strengthen and harmonise food safety systems so they are able to feed the growing, global population and develop markets that can deliver food safely, no matter where in the world the consumer is. To learn more, visit www.mygfsi.com.
For further information, contact Lee Green, Communications Director, The Consumer Goods Forum: l.green@theconsumergoodsforum.com
About GLOBALG.A.P.
GLOBALG.A.P. is a global certification program whose mission is to bring farmers and retailers together to produce and market safe food, to protect scarce resources, and to build a sustainable future. For more information, please visit www.globalgap.org.
For further information, contact Almut Sievers, Public Relations, GLOBALG.A.P: sievers@globalgap.org
