Did anyone attend the Global Food Safety Conference in Washington, DC?

If anyone attended the conference last week I would appreciate a ‘heads up’.

Thanks,
Simon

I was there - will get something posted tomorrow.

The Conference was fairly well attended with 600 people or so from many countries. Some presentations were good. Many - were examples of 'preaching to the choir'.

As the chairmanship of GFSI was transitioned to a new person (sorry - I can't recall his name - I think he's German) there were 2 main goals articulated for the organization.
(1) - Promote the concept of once certified accepted everywhere. (2) change the fact the research shows that consumers primary sources of trusted information on food is the media and the government. Both manufactureres and retailers need to communicate more and earn more trust.

GFSI continues to grow. There is no indication of limiting the number of schemes that may be benchmarked in the future. The idea is to benchmark any code or standard that is up to par - and then let market forces determine which schemes survive over time. Much of this will be based on compenetencty of auditors and cost.

Also of interest was the effort and discussions around potentially having government agencies accept GFSI certification as a reason to indicate reduced risk and perhaps alter allocation of government inspection resources. Of couse this is not official - but it was suggested as a potential direction.


As we left we were given access to the presenations - no one said they couldn't be shared - so here you go folks -

This website - http://2010presentat...foodsafety.com/
with the password 'puzzlepiece' will allow you to view the presenations.

Hope this was helpful.

The Conference was fairly well attended with 600 people or so from many countries. Some presentations were good. Many - were examples of 'preaching to the choir'.

As the chairmanship of GFSI was transitioned to a new person (sorry - I can't recall his name - I think he's German) there were 2 main goals articulated for the organization.
(1) - Promote the concept of once certified accepted everywhere. (2) change the fact the research shows that consumers primary sources of trusted information on food is the media and the government. Both manufactureres and retailers need to communicate more and earn more trust.

GFSI continues to grow. There is no indication of limiting the number of schemes that may be benchmarked in the future. The idea is to benchmark any code or standard that is up to par - and then let market forces determine which schemes survive over time. Much of this will be based on compenetencty of auditors and cost.

Also of interest was the effort and discussions around potentially having government agencies accept GFSI certification as a reason to indicate reduced risk and perhaps alter allocation of government inspection resources. Of couse this is not official - but it was suggested as a potential direction.


As we left we were given access to the presenations - no one said they couldn't be shared - so here you go folks -

This website - http://2010presentat...foodsafety.com/
with the password 'puzzlepiece' will allow you to view the presenations.

Hope this was helpful.

Thank you very much Cathy. Having government agencies accept GFSI certification is an interesting one as then the Certification Bodies become the enforcement bodies for upholding the law. That is a big step.

I’ve downloaded the 45 presentations on the website and will do some reading. For those who have not yet I suggest you visit the site and grab the presentations. I’m sure they will help you to be up to date with global food safety developments.

Thanks once again Cathy.

Regards,
Simon