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PARIS and ARLINGTON, USA, 9th December 2021 – The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), The Consumer Goods Forum’s Coalition of Action on food safety, and Safe Quality Food Institute, a division of FMI the Food Industry Association, are pleased to announce that SQF Edition 9 has successfully achieved recognition against GFSI’s Benchmarking Requirements Version 2020.
This recognition encompasses a large number of SQF codes, reflecting the SQFI farm to fork approach. The full list of scopes included in SQF recognition may be found here.
SQFI has more than 9400 current certificates to their SQF code Edition 9 (Food Safety). The majority of certifications are from the USA, Canada and Australia with SQFI having certifications in 38 countries spread across Africa, Middle East, Asia, Europe, the Americas and Oceania regions.
Gigi Vita, Senior Vice President and Chief Food Safety Assessment Officer of SQFI said: “We appreciate the GFSI recognition. SQF has been working to support the integrity of food safety and third-party accreditation with GFSI for two decades since its inception in 2000. We are delighted with this decision as this emphasises our ongoing commitment to the benchmarking process. The result brings trust and credibility to the certification process.”
Marie-Claude Quentin, Senior Technical Manager at GFSI, said: “It is great to see SQF successfully completing their GFSI benchmarking assessment once again, as well as the great improvements made over the years towards an ever more robust certification programme. I was delighted to support SQF through this assessment.”
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About the GFSI Benchmarking Process
Benchmarking is a procedure by which a food safety Certification Program Owner (CPO) is compared to the GFSI Benchmarking Requirements. The process is designed to be executed in an independent, unbiased, technically proficient and transparent manner. A program is ‘recognised’ by GFSI when it has been verified that it meets every single GFSI benchmarking requirement, both in procedures and in operations. An independent benchmark leader, supported by the GFSI Technical Manager, assesses whether the application meets GFSI requirements, followed by a public consultation period that is open to all GFSI Stakeholders. The benchmark leader and GFSI Technical Manager then make a recommendation to the GFSI Steering Committee regarding recognition of the programme. The full process is defined in the GFSI Benchmarking Requirements.
About GFSI
The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI; the Coalition) is a CEO-led Coalition of Action from The Consumer Goods Forum, bringing together 34 retailers and manufacturers and an extended food safety community to help oversee food safety standards for businesses and help provide access to safe food for people everywhere. As one of the world’s largest networks to help achieve safe food , GFSI is committed to making food safety everyone’s business and the Coalition members are addressing challenges facing food safety systems in their supply chains and the markets they operate in, and are helping to raise the food safety bar globally. Its ambition is to strengthen and harmonise food safety systems so they are able to feed the growing, global population and develop markets that can deliver food safely, no matter where in the world the consumer is. To learn more, visit www.mygfsi.com.
For further information, contact Lisa Prévert, Senior Communications Manager, The Consumer Goods Forum: l.prevert@theconsumergoodsforum.com
About The Safe Quality Institute
The SQF (Safe Quality Food) Institute is a division of FMI, and was established to administer the SQF Program, a leading, global food safety and quality certification and management system. While we are most famously known for our globally benchmarked food safety and quality program, we do so much more writing and maintaining this standard. The SQFI mission is to deliver consistent, globally recognized food safety and quality certification programs based on sound scientific principles, consistently applied across all industry sectors, and valued by all stakeholders. To learn more, visit www.SQFI.com.
