Overview

Over the past several decades, the world has seen numerous food safety crises in the headlines, eroding consumers’ trust in the safety of the food they buy, the brands they love and even the food industry at large.

The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) was created in 2000 to help address this global issue. It is a landmark initiative of The Consumer Goods Forum (CGF), a global industry network working to support Better Lives Through Better Business. We aim to build consumers’ trust in the food they buy – no matter where their food has come from, nor where in the world they live – by improving food safety management practices.

In 2020, in line with the broader CGF strategy, GFSI became a ‘Coalition of Action’, a new approach towards collective impact.

GFSI has grown into a vast, global multi-stakeholder movement. We enable the extensive collaboration that is so critical to ensuring a safe global food supply, involving both the private and public sectors.

The GFSI community works on a volunteer basis and is composed of the world’s leading food safety experts from retail, manufacturing and food service companies, including upstream suppliers, as well as international organisations, governments, academia and service providers to the global food industry.

Our vision is for safe food for consumers everywhere. By this, we mean a world in which

1. consumers can have confidence that the food they purchase on a daily basis is safe to eat and feed their families.
2. each individual involved in every step of the process of getting food from the field to their plate understands their responsibility in protecting the food’s integrity and safety.
3. companies and governments around the world set aside differences to work together for a safe global food supply.
4. small and local producers and food facilities can grow their business by ensuring their products meet international safety standards
5. food safety inspectors have consistent and expanded independence, skills and objectivity
6. the many systems and processes that provide controls and assurance on food safety are efficient and don’t unnecessarily duplicate each other.

We believe this vision will enable the industry safely to build consumer trust, at a time when demand for the world’s food supply continues to grow and when consumers are demanding more information, more choice and more authenticity in the food they buy.