The entire farm-to-table chain is subject to numerous internal and external second party and third party food safety audits and compliance programs. These audit results are often shared with customers as verification of the company’s commitment to food safety. Members seek to reduce the number and frequency of audits while demonstrating compliance with regulatory and product traceability requirements as well as buyer requirements. A certain degree of consolidation has taken place with auditing companies benchmarking their audits against various standards or compliance schemes. Although multiple audit events are the norm they aid the industry in systems testing and in helping to create the best possible food safety programs.
Some benchmarking food safety standards/schemes:
Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) does not undertake any accreditation or certification activities. The GFSI Guidance Document Version 5 (September 2007), has commonly agreed criteria for food safety standards, against which any food or farm assurance standard can be benchmarked. Currently seven major retailers: 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
GFSI benchmarked schemes.
GLOBALGAP (formally known as EurepGAP) is a private sector body that provides the standards and framework for independent, recognized third party certification of farm production processes based on ISO/IEC Guide 65 (EN45011). Auditors of the standard work for
commercial entities who are licensed by GLOBALGAP. GLOBALGAP Integrated Farm Assurance standard covers the agricultural production process from before the plant is in the ground (origin and propagation material control points) to non-processed end product (no processing or manufacturing is covered).
Additional auditing companies, with their own audits and who may also audit with a customer’s or association’s standard or scheme.
