GFSI successfully benchmarks new food safety schemes against the GFSI Guidance Document Version 5

'The Global Food Safety Initiative is pleased to announce recent progress in driving convergence between food safety schemes, following the benchmarking of the FSSC 22000, PrimusGFS, SQF 1000 and Synergy 22000 schemes. These schemes now fully meet the GFSI requirements, laid out in the Guidance Document Version 5.'

This is fantastic news for everyone involved in the Food Industry. 4 more schemes now meet GFSI requirements and the term 'GFSI' is being increasingly used as a requirement to trade with retailers, as opposed to specifying individual standards.

For any further details about this, we'd be happy to provide more information - info@ncsiamericas.com, or visit us on www.ncsiamericas.com

Auditor Competence

One issue we heard about as a recurring theme last week at the GFSI conference is ensuring the industry has competent auditors and assessors.

Consistency between auditors has long been an issue the industry has faced, and recently many organizations face issues with ensuring their auditors are competent.

We believe we've got the mix just right and pride ourselves on the ability to offer highly competent auditors. Our auditors all undergo an internal sign off process, in addition to the various sign off processes mandated by standard owners.

In addition we also run 6 monthly calibration workshops, where we recall ALL of our auditors from around the world to discuss standard updates, and to come to a consensus on the interpretation for a particular standard. This means that should one of our auditors raise one point as a non conformance, so should another, and another, and so on.

But most importantly in this process of ensuring consistency is the role of our Technical Management Team. This teams role includes reviewing all audit reports and they act as the ultimate experts at NCSI Americas on various standards. It's their job to ensure that all of our auditors are calibrated and auditing to standards that our clients have come to expect from NCSI Americas.

GFSI - one step closer to a saner world?

Recently, we attended and exhibited at the GFSI Conference (aka The Consumer Goods Forum aka The Global Food Safety Conference) which was held at the JW Marriott, Washington DC. 3-5 February 2010.

For those not familiar with GFSI, it's an effort to benchmark standards against one another (among other things) so that Food Safety standards can be recognized for what they are.

Many people in the past may make the comment that often retailers and purchasers would request specific standards because they had an agreement with the standard owner, or they understood that standard best. This was often confusing for those involved in the food industry, because as many people would often argue, BRC and SQF (as an example) were mostly the same standard anyway, looking at the same things with only some minor differences - why then, did purchasers refuse to recognize similar standards?

The opinions on that are varied, but it does look like there's a fair amount of momentum in the industry to do away with this adversarial approach. Which is good news.

So what does this mean for those involved in the food sectors?

Ideally, it means less audits, and therefore, less cost to the bottom line. A good thing for everyone involved. If a Certification Body can perform one audit, rather than 15 Certification Bodies performing 15 audits, then everyone wins (except the auditors).

So, the GFSI conference is yet one more small step to this saner world that most in the food industry pine for. We're not there yet, but there's some extremely encouraging signs. Major retailers are now accepting a multitude of standards meaning less audits for our clients.

At the most recent conference, and at the technical committee meetings, it finally looked like there was a solid consensus, and the 700 or so attendees were there kind of people needed to make decisions - CEO's, Managing Directors, Global Directors of Food Safety were the most common titles to be seen.

The next conference is in 2011, and in London. It's yet to be seen if these steps towards GFSI benchmarked standards will prevail - let's all hope it does for the industry's sake.

The Wonderful World Of... Auditing

Auditing... the very word sends shivers down peoples spines. People smile and nod politely when you tell them that you work in the auditing industry, and then make equally polite excuses to leave the conversation.

But it's not all bad, and it's important to differentiate between different types of auditing, and auditors.

NCSI Americas, for example, is focussed on certification of products or systems. This means that more often than not, our auditors go into a business, identify problems in the system, and advise ways to correct these problems. The usual perception of auditors are those that tell you to pay more tax.

Funny joke (if you're an auditor): Why did you become an auditor? Because Accounting was too exciting.

We hope to provide through this blog a few stories that help understand what certification and auditing is, and how NCSI Americas can take the time to understand your business and help you achieve the certification you need.

Our home website is www.ncsiamericas.com (we're a subsidiary of NCSI - www.ncsi.com.au), please feel free to find out a bit more about us. We'll have many more posts up soon.