GFSI Overview

The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) is coordinated by The Food Business Forum CIES. This forum is a global food network made up of approximately 400 retailers and manufacturers worldwide.

GFSI "benchmarks" food safety standards, evaluating them against a set of criteria to ensure the core of the standards are equivalent and certification will be acceptable. The goal is “Once certified, accepted everywhere” eliminating the time expense involved in duplication of audits. Many retailers and food manufacturing companies are requesting that suppliers become certified to a GFSI recognized Standard. The food safety schemes currently benchmarked by GFSI include:

• FSSC 22000 (See Implementation Package)
• SQF 2000 Level 2 (See Implementation Package)
• BRC Version 5
• Dutch HACCP Option B
• Global Aquaculture Alliance BAP Issue 2
• Global Red Meat Standard Version 3
• International Food Standard Version 5
• Synergy 22000
• Canada GAP for primary production
• Global GAP for primary production

Video Tutorial: What is GFSI?

ISO 22000 and GFSI

In September of 2007 the GFSI Technical Committee wrote a position paper on ISO 22000. One of the issues brought up in that paper was a perceived inadequacy of the requirements for PRPs; ISO 22000 did not included a detailed description of the PRP program to be implemented.

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The GFSI committee felt there was a need for additional specifications. To address this issue, another document has been developed- PAS 220, a publicly available specification for prerequisite programs for food manufacturers. It is designed to define the requirements for a prerequisite program to be used to meet the ISO 22000.

ISO 22000 requires PRPs, and PAS 220 defines details for PRPs in food manufacturing. To combine the ISO 22000 document and the PAS 220 into one certification scheme, FSSC 22000 was developed. Food Safety System Certification (FSSC) is now the owner of this certification scheme, responsible for accreditation of registrars and management of the certification scheme.

The FSSC 22000 Certification scheme is GFSI Benchmarked. If you are looking for certification to a GFSI recognized scheme, this is one of the available choices, and is growing rapidly in popularity.