Redefining Food Safety
June 5, 2008
If suppliers don’t meet stricter food safety and quality standards,
will they be left behind in a global marketplace?
By Megan Pellegrini
This winter, Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. sent ripples through the food industry with the announcement that its private label and grocery suppliers’ plants had to be certified with one of the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) standards by July 2009. As the first, and largest, U.S. grocer to mandate compliance, Wal-Mart is throwing its weight behind these stricter, international food safety and quality standards. If suppliers don’t become GFSI certified, will they be left behind?
“The whole idea of auditing is evolving,” says Jill Hollingsworth, vice president of food safety programs for the Washington, D.C.-based Food Marketing Institute (FMI), which operates the Safe Quality Food (SQF) Institute. “What we see emerging now — a shift away from auditing to robust, rigorous certification — started in Europe years ago.”
Currently, the United States does not have standards or regulations in place for food auditors’ training or practices, beyond the non-profit American National Standards Institute’s voluntary evaluation of auditors and certification bodies. The concept of third-party certification, in fact, has been largely foreign — and even controversial — to American manufacturers, but is commonly accepted in European and Asian countries.
The result is that in today’s landscape a contract manufacturer can be audited 15 to 20 times a year from different companies — with an estimated 93 percent redundancy in the audits, according to a study from Minneapolis-based Cargill Inc. Each retail and/or foodservice client either sends its own auditors out to manufacturers’ plants, or provides a list of auditors for manufacturers to select.
Either way, the manufacturer almost always foots the bill for each audit performed, whether it’s redundant or not. “The auditing system has turned into a joke, an absolute nightmare,” says Carl La Frate, president, ProCheck Food Safety Consultants, based in Baldwinsville, N.Y., which performs pre-audits before companies are audited. “There is very little consistency in these audits.” He notes that often times, one auditor will score a manufacturer high and then another will mark it low.
In the current system, a milk carton manufacturer, for example, may conduct its own monthly audits of maintenance, production and quality assurance processes, explains Tom Hugé president of St. Louis-based ASI Food Safety Consultants. Then, its three big customers will come in to review how the manufacturer is producing its cartons. Finally, a third-party auditor will inspect the plant as well.
“There is no standard for how often auditors come in,” Hugé says. “But a plant should be looked at by its clients and a third-party auditor at a minimum of two times a year. It’s a mistake not to perform self-audits at least every 30 days.” ASI currently has one auditor certified under the SQF plan — part of the GFSI standard — with six to seven in the process of becoming certified.
Auditing the Auditors
In today’s environment of high-profile food recalls, no one wants to be the next poster child, so tightened standards are critical for brand owners and contract manufacturers.
“The ability to verify food safety and quality standards is critical to retailers and brand owners today,” La Frate says. “Brand image is paramount with consumers. And private label branding is a whole different ball game because you’re putting the regional supermarket chain’s name on the brand.” He notes that he now gets 20 to 40 requests a day from manufacturers wanting to learn more about becoming SQF-certified.
The GFSI program was created in 2000, in part, to establish a credible, independent system for certifying the food safety of plants worldwide, which would be supported by suppliers and retailers. The international body comprises more than 60 retail companies that endorse only international programs that meet the highest standards of food safety excellence.
The four international food safety certification programs and management system plans approved by the GFSI program are: Safe Quality Food (SQF), British Retail Consortium (BRC) Global Standard for Food Safety, Dutch Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) food safety system and International Food Standard. The SQF and BRC programs are commonly followed in the United States. In fact, the SQF plan is aligned with HACCP, Codex Alimentarius, ISO 9000 and the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods.
“Retailers realize that they are putting a burden on contract manufacturers with so many audits,” says Tom Chestnut, vice president of food processing for NSF International, based in Ann Arbor, Mich., a non-profit organization dedicated to standards development, product certification, education and risk-management for public health and safety. “The SQF evaluation standards establish consistency to the audits. So, if a manufacturer receives one audit, someone else will accept the findings. Processors will see their number of audits shrink.”
Launched in 1994, the SQF plan has been administered for the past four to five years by the SQF Institute, a division of the Food Marketing Institute. SQF certifications have been issued to at least 9,000 companies operating in Asia-Pacific, Europe, Middle East and North and South America. What sets it apart from the other food safety programs is that it also evaluates product quality and systems operations.
“Our retail members were insistent that we look at quality because they felt good companies could handle safety and quality side by side,” Hollingsworth says.
Basically, the three components of the SQF plan are: the food safety and quality standard itself, the audits are only conducted by certification bodies that meet the SQF’s higher standard, and an international accreditation body ensures the certification bodies are doing their work properly.
“Our system adds independence but also checks and balances, which takes us way beyond the older audit system to look at how manufacturers produce their product and operate,” Hollingsworth says. “This process reassures retailers that they are sourcing from the safest companies possible.”
SQF auditors go through a rigorous learning and training process, work under a certification body, and are specifically registered to only audit categories that meet their work qualifications. So, for example, a dairy auditor would not also audit bakeries. Right now, close to 200 auditors are recognized to do SQF audits, according to Hollingsworth.
“The response for certification bodies and auditors has been positive,” she says. “Manufacturers feel there is more integrity in the system and report having an overall better experience, and less subjectivity from the auditors. The auditor’s documentation is more clear and precise than before, with less possible bias since every score has to include an explanation.”
Hollingsworth notes that the SQF program has recently exploded in adoption by manufacturers. Indeed, the total nu mber of GFSI certificates issued in 2006 was 15,000, in 2007 it was more than 30,000, and this year the number should double again, she says.
Any manufacturer interested in becoming SQF certified needs to go through training sessions, can utilize pre-analysis tools from the SQF Institute and learn more about their certification body options. Some will find that their operating systems are already quite good, and others will discover they have a lot of work to complete before attempting to pass the SQF-quality audit.
“It’s our goal for companies to do well on the audit, so we prepare them as much as possible so they have a successful outcome,” Hollingsworth says. “Our approach is to allow manufacturers to work their way into the system. It does take extra work to become program compliant with SQF but it pays off.”
Getting Up To Speed
Roughly two to three years ago, NSF International was the first U.S. organization to become an SQF-certification body. According to Chestnut, demand for information on SQF certifications has increased in the past six months, as many manufacturers didn’t have much background on GFSI standards until the Wal-Mart announcement went out.
“If manufacturers are doing very well on audits conducted today, they will continue to perform well with the new audits,” Chestnut says. “NSF’s audits are intensive now, so they will be able to meet future SQF or BRC schemes.” For those interested in the new GFSI standards, NSF offers seminars, webinar presentations, learning opportunities through its Center for Public Health Education, and a course on the new qualifications.
Traditionally, processors have just called up auditing agencies to schedule their next audit. But now they also have several stages to comply with under the SQF standard, such as training their own staff on food safety and operating procedures, conducting desk audits before the audit occurs, and scheduling a follow-up audit about six months after the main audit. “At NSF, we tell processors what is required under GFSI, the program costs and present facts on what’s involved. For example, there are other options besides SQF to meet the GFSI’s requirement,” Chestnut says.
He notes that just as many NSF professionals are trained in the BRC system as SQF, because it is the largest provider of audits in the world, more geared at food safety, and a little simpler process without a training program. Its United Kingdom office is trained in the International Food Standard, as well.
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