GFSI Publishes Sixth Edition of its Guidance Document

On Jan. 5 2011, GFSI released the Sixth Edition of its Guidance Document. Food safety scheme owners whose food safety management schemes had been previously recognized against the Fifth Edition of the Guidance Document were given until Dec. 31, 2011 to reapply for full benchmarking against the Sixth Edition.

The GFSI Guidance Document was drafted with input from food safety experts from all over the world, and defines the process by which food safety schemes may gain recognition by GFSI and gives guidance to these schemes.

Benchmarking is a “procedure by which a food safety-related scheme is compared to the GFSI Guidance Document”. Upon completion of the benchmarking process, a food safety management scheme is ‘recognised’ by GFSI when all of its criteria are considered to be equivalent to the requirements set out in the GFSI Guidance Document.  Achieving equivalence against a common set of requirements means that GFSI recognized schemes have a common foundation for managing food safety which should provide consistent audit results.

Benchmarking Status Update
GFSI announce that the following schemes are currently going through the GFSI Benchmarking Process:

BRC Global Standard for Food Safety
CanadaGAP (Canadian Horticultural Council On-Farm Food Safety Program)
FSSC 22000 Food Products and Packaging Materials
Global Aquaculture Alliance Seafood Processing Standard
GLOBALG.A.P.
Global Red Meat Standard (GRMS)
IFS Food Version 6
PrimusGFS
Safe Quality Food

In the GFSI Guidance Document Sixth Edition, GFSI committed to full transparency throughout the benchmarking process. To this end, regular updates on each scheme’s progress will be available on the GFSI website, as well as an overview of the scopes of recognition covered by the applicant scheme.