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 the Harmonized Produce Safety Standard (HPSS), which first completed the GFSI benchmarking process in 2016.
HPSS was designed by and for producers in the United States or selling into the United States market. HPSS includes verbatim the Produce GAP Harmonization Initiative’s Harmonized Standards. Facilitated by the United Fresh Produce Association, the Initiative’s Technical Working Group has aligned its Harmonized Standards to the FSMA Produce Safety Rule. The HPSS control points aid producers in identifying FSMA requirements that must be addressed at the farm level.
“HPSS allows GLOBALG.A.P. to offer a certification solution designed especially for the USA market” 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 continue offering HPSS as a GFSI benchmarked standard, alongside the Integrated Farm Assurance (IFA) for farms and Produce Handling Assurance (PHA) for post-harvest handling operations.”
Giovanna Ordonez, GFSI Senior Technical Manager, The Consumer Goods Forum, said, “It’s been a difficult year or so for many of the CPOs, so we are delighted with the progress made by GLOBALG.A.P. and their continued commitment to GFSI recognition. Even through a global pandemic, we cannot afford to let food safety standards drop, and we look forward to seeing more certification programmes becoming recognised against Version 2020.1 in the coming months”.
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.
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.
