What is GFSI?
GFSI stands for The Global Food Safety Initiative. It is a business-driven initiative for the development of food safety management systems to ensure food facilities are processing safe food for consumers.
The GFSI is a private organization that oversees and approves different auditing platforms as meeting their criteria. This criterion provides a universal gold-standard of recognition to specific food safety audits.
In practice, this means that a food processor or manufacturer who can point to their GFSI certification can effectively and immediately show their customers and potential customers that their plant is operating with a structured, comprehensive, and effective food safety program.
In dollars and cents, this means that if you want to reach new customers and keep existing customers, a GFSI audit and GFSI Certification will help them to know that they aren’t likely to face food safety problems with your product.
Every GFSI standard effectively reviews three things:
- Does the supplier say what they do? (Reviewing policies and procedures)
- Does the supplier do what they say? (Observing processes while they run, interviewing employees, inspecting the facility)
- Does the supplier track that they do what they say? (Reviewing records)
Putting all of these elements together, a GFSI audit ensures that a supplier is producing safe food year round.
While it can be stressful for a supplier to learn that an important contract hinges on obtaining a certification they’ve never heard of, suppliers who successfully pursue GFSI certification generally find that the effort invested leads to significant rewards.
Their job is to make sure that all of the children or schemes/platforms follow the rules of safe food. If they do, they maintain their GFSI certification.
As the parent, GFSI has created a benchmarking process where they compare procedures of food safety-related schemes or platforms to the GFSI Guidance Document. The Guidance Document first drafted with input from food safety experts continues to help define the process in which food safety schemes can be benchmarked by GFSI and be recognized across the globe.
A food safety scheme is recognized by GFSI when it meets the food safety requirements defined in the GFSI Guidance Documents. Remember that GFSI is an organization that benchmarks and approves different auditing standards. There isn’t technically any single audit called “The GFSI Audit,” but there are several standards that are GFSI-benchmarked.
GFSI benchmarked schemes:
- Primus GFS
- Global Aquaculture Alliance Seafood
- Global Gap
- FSSC 22000
- Global Red Meat Standard
- Canadagap
- SQF
- BRCGS Global Standard
- IFS International Featured Standards
- Japan Food Safety Management Association
Many food processors first hear of the Global Food Safety Initiative when a customer asks for a copy of their GFSI Certificate. Because GFSI is such a large and complicated institution, it can be difficult to grasp what exactly GFSI certification means on your own.
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