GFSI: Safe Food for Consumers Everywhere
The increasing severity and frequency of food safety incidents across the globe has certainly tested consumer confidence in the food supply chain. How do producers, processors, distributors, and retailers – all those responsible for getting our food from farm to fork – maximize the safety of what consumers will find on their plate during a night out to eat or on store shelves while shopping at their local grocery store?In response to a number of food safety scares, a group of international retailers created the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) whose central vision has been “Safe Food for Consumers Everywhere.” GFSI, who now represents over 70% of food retail revenue worldwide, is committed to benchmarking food safety management schemes in order to enhance food safety and restore consumer confidence. Equally important, GFSI encourages common retailer acceptance of GFSI recognized standards in order to reduce excessive audit costs for suppliers.
About FSSC 22000 (Request a Quote)
PJR was accredited in July 2010. FSSC 22000 is a complete food safety management system certification scheme based on existing standards for certification: ISO 22000, PAS 220:2008 (a prerequisite program on food safety for food manufacturing).
FSSC 22000 certification is accredited under the standard ISO guide 17021. Manufacturers that are already certified against ISO 22000 will only need an additional review against technical specifications for sector PRPs to meet this certification scheme. Organizations that want to integrate quality in their management systems follow the requirements of ISO 9001.
It is developed for the certification of food safety systems of organizations in the food chain that process or manufacture animal products, perishable vegetable based products, products with a long shelf life, (other) food ingredients like additives, vitamins, bio-cultures and food packaging material manufacturing.
The FSSC 22000 certification scheme has been given full recognition by the Global Food Safety Initiative Board of Directors. GFSI promotes common acceptance of GFSI recognized standards by retailers worldwide in order to improve the cost efficiency of food safety audits for food suppliers.
FSSC 22000 – Frequently Asked Questions
What are the benefits of FSSC 22000 Certification?
Certification enables manufacturers to focus their Food Safety efforts on scientific and technical advances, and their audit resources on improvement rather than compliance.
As the scheme is based on an ISO standard: 1) it has truly worldwide credibility; and 2) it provides a common language, improving communication across the supply chain.
Why do big companies support FSSC 2000?
Because FSSC 22000 is ISO 17021 based, it allows provision for site sampling, therefore not requiring that all sites are visited with each audit. This allows for cost savings to the large multi-site company.
How do we get started?
We highly recommend that you initiate a relationship with your certification body prior to completing the implementation of your system. This will help you plan for the certification process in terms of budgeting and scheduling. As part of the planning process, we also highly recommend a pre-assessment, both to assess your preparedness and to increase your overall chances of passing your initial certification audit the first time.
How does my company become certified?
You must select a certification body that has accreditation against ISO 17021 and the relevant AB must have an IAF/MLA signatory. The audit team assigned by your certification body will perform a stage 1 and stage 2 audit and after analysis and review of the findings an audit report on the assessment will be issued. When all nonconformities have been answered and accepted, and an Executive Committee approval is obtained, then a certificate will be issued with a validity of three years (every year a surveillance audit will be done in the following two years to maintain certification).