Grower-shipper-processors, members of the retail and foodservice
industries, and representatives of produce associations including FFVA
are working to harmonize standards and audits for Good Agricultural
Practices.
Producers are joining forces with others in the fresh produce industry
to champion the harmonization of food safety standards
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The effort, called the Produce GAP Harmonization Initiative, was
launched after discussion at the Global Conference on Produce Food
Safety Standards held in conjunction with the United Fresh Produce
Association convention in April.
“Our goal is that one audit by any credible third party can be
acceptable to all buyers,” said Brian Kocher of Chiquita Brands
North America, who leads the initiative’s steering committee. At
its first meeting in September, the steering committee members agreed
that developing the standards would be an open and transparent process
that would welcome all industry players to participate.
A technical working group will examine similarities and differences
in existing GAP standards in an effort to develop harmonized GAP
standards for proposal back to the steering committee.
Tony DiMare, FFVA Executive Committee member and former FFVA
chairman, is a member of the steering committee. “The interest we
had as a company was both to enhance our overall food safety program and
stay ahead of the curve so that our customers and the end consumer would
be ensured that any products coming from DiMare are of the utmost
quality as far as food safety is concerned.”
DiMare said that his company and others in the industry have been
faced with numerous demands from different customers using varying
auditing companies. “We felt that we as an industry needed to
strive toward unifying the audit system and simplifying it so we have
one commodity-specific standard – in this case the tomato industry
– that was equal for everybody,” DiMare said. “With
all these different companies, it resulted in a lot of additional
cost.”
Growers, packers and shippers must keep detailed records of their food
safety procedures.
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DiMare said that his company might go through up to 12 audits a
year.
Getting together all the players can be a bit challenging, DiMare
said. “We need to come up with something that is acceptable at the
farm level, the packinghouse level, the repack level on up to the food
service, restaurant or retail level,” he said. “We also have
to satisfy the auditors who will be doing these audits and FDA and USDA
as well.” DiMare said it’s good to have across-the-board
participation in the process even though discussions can become a very
long, tedious process.
The technical working group, headed by Suresh Decosta of McDonalds
and Dr. David Gombas, United Fresh senior vice president for food safety
and technology, is hammering out how the final audit will work.
“We need to finalize the audit system and how it’s going to
be scored. And then ultimately it’s got to be accepted by all the
stakeholders,” said DiMare.
