Global Food Safety Initiative

The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) is a private organization, established and managed by the international trade association, the Consumer Goods Forum under Belgian law in May 2000. The GFSI maintains a scheme to benchmark food safety standards for manufacturers as well as farm assurance standards.

The Global Food Safety Initiative is a business-driven initiative for the continuous improvement of food safety management systems to ensure confidence in the delivery of safe food to consumers worldwide. GFSI provides a platform for collaboration between some of the world’s leading food safety experts from retailer, manufacturer and food service companies, service providers associated with the food supply chain, international organizations, academia and government.

The initiative was launched in 2000 following a number of food safety crises when consumer confidence was at an all-time low. Since then, experts from all over the world have been collaborating in numerous Technical Working Groups to tackle current food safety issues defined by GFSI stakeholders.

Key activities within GFSI include the definition of food safety requirements for food safety schemes through a benchmarking process. This process is thought to lead to recognition of existing food safety schemes and enhances confidence, acceptance and implementation of third party certification along the entire food supply chain.

GFSI’s current focus is on extending the requirements to cover all scopes of the global food supply chain from farm to fork. Other important current activities include the development of a capacity building programme for small and/or less developed businesses to facilitate their access to local markets and a continuous focus on food safety auditor competence to bring industry experts in collaboration with key stakeholders to a common consensus on the skills, knowledge and attributes that a competent auditor should possess.

Within GFSI, benchmarking is a “procedure by which a food safety-related scheme is compared to the GFSI Guidance Document.”

Back in 2000, food safety was a top of mind issue for companies due to several high-profile recalls, quarantines and negative publicity about the food industry. There was also extensive audit fatigue through the industry, as retailers performed inspections or audits themselves or asked a third party to do this on their behalf. These were often carried out against food safety schemes that lacked international certification and accreditation, resulting in incomparable auditing results.

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