Thanks for the 'heads up' TS. It would be great if you could revert with a summary.
Cheers,
Simon
My summary of the NCA Webinar on 3rd party auditing (focus on GFSI):
The webinar was nicely prepared and covered most of the basics of 3rd party auditing focusing on GFSI standards. It included a brief history of the GFSI committee and why it was benchmarking standards (to consolidate and reduce the need for repetitive auditing). There were some interesting stats given from an ASQ article, but article name was not given.
- Sixty-one percent of U.S. adults feel the U.S. food recall process is only fair or poor.
- Seventy-three percent of adults say they are equally concerned about food safety as the war on terror.
- Eighty-two percent of adults believe that the food industry should be required to follow international standards on food safety.
- Less than half (48%) said that they actually trust the government’s ability to ensure the safety of food products.
- Only half believe the federal government does a good job enforcing laws that ensure our nation’s food supply is safe.
- Ninety-three percent of adults are aware of instances of food recalls due to health and safety concerns in the last three years.
- This is up from a 2007 Harris Poll, showing 79% were aware of food recall occurrences in the last three years.
- Food recalls have become even more of a serious concern for adults (47%) versus the 2007 Harris Poll data (29%).
- A total of 92% of Americans are at least somewhat concerned about recalls.
- When recalls on brands adults usually purchase do occur, 47% would temporarily purchase another brand and then purchase the recalled brand once it was safe.
- Twenty-seven percent of adults would avoid using any brand made by the manufacturer of a recalled product. This is up from 21% in 2007
The presenter felt that the GFSI standards were the future and listed Walmart, Kroger, Costco, Wegmans, and Publix as examples of companies asking for GFSI standards. (I also know that Target should be on the list.)
The presenter felt that FSSC would come out as the strongest in the future (presenter had a strong ISO background so their may be some prejudice) but that BRC and SQF were equally strong. Currently in the US, SQF seems to have the strongest support but FSSC is just getting started.
The presenter indicated the similarities between the standards with
HACCP and PRPs being the backbone to all of the GFSI standards. They also emphasized team approach and management commitment as key elements to success.
That was it in a nut shell, nothing groundbreaking but it was good for some of our staff (sales in particular) to hear and see what is happening in the marketplace.
TS
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