Hello! We are a fresh produce (potatoes, sweet potatoes, and onions) supplier and have been SQF certified since 2008. What we are seeing is that retailers still don't really understand food safety. They know they need "something", and they've heard about "GAPs" and they've heard about GFSI; but they don't understand the difference, or even what they mean; and they don't know what to ask for. Plus, they also continue to get courted by a variety of 3rd party certification firms who tell them that THEIR audit scheme is the best. No offense to anyone associated with PrimusLabs, but Primus is a big one for this. Hence, retailers then think that the PrimusGFS scheme is the "best", and don't want to accept SQF or BRC (when these two were actually the first GFSI schemes accepted in the U.S.); and all three are equivalent. I've had to do a lot of fast talking and justification to get some of our customers to understand that SQF is also a GFSI scheme and needs to be accepted as well.
Additionally, some retailers (*cough Costco*) accept GFSI audits, but then want their own little addendum for produce which has some compliance points that are unreasonable and unneeded for low-risk products like ours. Our last auditor agreed on this and actually felt badly that he had to give us two non-conformances on the Costco produce addendum. But, we simply were not going to do them. There is no risk. And guess what? Costco hasn't stopped buying product from us.
I mentioned GAPs before. For fresh produce suppliers, this is also an area where we're seeing confusion by retailers. The USDA GAP/GHP audit scheme (while a fine audit), is not GFSI benchmarked (it really needs to be), but many retailers are still asking for a GAP audit, while not understanding that GFSI audits also cover Good Agricultural Practices. Again an area where I've had to "prove" to our customers that Module 7 of the SQF scheme IS a GAP audit.
We also have some customers who continue to send their QA people in every once in a while to do their own audits even though they still want our GFSI certification. And then there are also customers who don't send a QA person in, but send us lengthy questionnaires to complete, in addition to wanting our GFSI certification.
So, no, having a GFSI certification has not made things simpler and has not decreased the amount of paperwork and requirements by retailers. Additionally, now many of our retailers also want us to be registered on databases like iCiX, Azzule, and TraceGains. So, once again, because someone convinced these retailers that these databases are THE THING to help them track all their suppliers' information, we suppliers are continuing to be burdened with having to keep ourselves updated in these databases. Big exclamation pointed, red-lettered e-mails come that say, "YOUR DOCUMENTATION IS NOT COMPLETE IN ICIX! LOG ON NOW TO GET IN COMPLIANCE, OR SUCH AND SUCH RETAILER WILL STOP BUYING YOUR PRODUCTS!" I'm exaggerating somewhat, but sometime it seems that way.
Ok, sorry, this got a little rantish, but I think it's safe to say we're all still a bit frustrated (and tired =D). I don't know what the answer is, but it seems that retailers need some more education and the education needs to go right down to the minimum wage workers in the stores and the phone jockeys in Sales and category management, so they know what they are talking about and asking for.