Danone & GFSI: Walking the Talk and Talking the Walk

At Danone, the parent company of Dannon, the answer is the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI): Walking the talk and talking the walk.

Not only are all Danone facilities certified to the GFSI-benchmarked FSSC 22000, all Danone suppliers are required to be certified to a GFSI scheme, and Corporate Quality General Manager Yves Rey introduced the food manufacturing industry to GFSI in 2005, then held the position of GFSI chairman from 2012 through early 2014. At the February 2014 Global Food Safety Conference, where Rey turned over the two-year chairmanship to Cenk Gürol of Japan (See New GFSI Leaders, sidebar below), Rey spoke on “One World ... One Safe Food Supply” and granted an exclusive interview to QA magazine.
 

Trend Setting.

Rey sees it as a corporate responsibility for large businesses to lead the industry in food safety and innovation. “As a leader, we must be a trend setter,” Rey said. Rey was the first food manufacturing representative to join GFSI, which was begun as a retail initiative. He had heard about GFSI and its harmonizing standards, and realized that it was an initiative that would be beneficial to the entire supply chain. So in 2005, he joined the GFSI board. However, he said, “We didn’t want to be certified to a retailer scheme. Instead, I said, let’s set up a manufacturer scheme, then benchmark it to the GFSI guidance document.” In this way, another link in the supply chain would be held to the same standards, but the application would be customized to fit its differing processes.

“If you want to be in harmony, you have to speak the same language, then follow the same standards,” he said. It wasn’t easy at first to convince manufacturers to come on board, and increasing awareness and expansion are still key drivers, but with geographic and supply chain expansion as key goals of Rey’s chairmanship, GFSI has made major strides in the food manufacturing world—with Danone leading by example.

At Danone, all facilities are certified to FSSC 22000. Additionally, Rey said, “Suppliers can be certified to any GFSI scheme—but they have to be certified to one.” For high-risk suppliers, the company also may mandate additional requirements based on its testing. For example, because food fraud can’t be anticipated, the company may require that some products considered to be high risk undergo vulnerability assessments to help detect and prevent potential economic adulteration.

Food fraud is also gaining attention with GFSI, with a Food Fraud Think Tank developed in 2012 and the current plan to incorporate it as a key element into GFSI standards. However, the GFSI position is that it doesn’t want to add another audit system, rather new key elements are to be incorporated into the Guidance Document (version 7), due in 2015. Additionally, he said, there is an “urgency to start implementing food fraud vulnerability assessments and associated vulnerability control plans in collaboration with SSAFE [Safe Supply of Affordable Food Everywhere] by the end of 2014.”

Food fraud, and its potential food safety issues (such as that of melamine), is just one aspect of emerging risk that is of global concern. “Food safety knows no borders,” Rey said. “In order to start mitigating risk, we, as a leader in the food industry, should anticipate emerging risk.” As such, Danone’s food safety research includes an Advanced Food Safety initiative, focused on such areas as emerging pathogens, food additives, and endocrine disrupters for which it applies advanced methodology in new ways. For example, Rey said, Danone knows the fingerprint necessary for milk to meet its requirements. So when a supply came in that not only didn’t meet the fingerprint, but also had an unidentifiable component, the product and tests were held, then subjected to Danone’s advanced methodology for identification and determination of its safety. Although Danone considers food safety to be non-competitive, during such testing, the research is maintained as a proprietary initiative. But once the result is attained and verified, it is then shared and made non-competitive, Rey said. Such advance research is important to Danone, whose mission is to “bring health through food to as many people as possible.” As Rey said, “How could we bring health through food without providing food safety?”
 

Public/Private Partnership.

“Food safety is a shared risk and a shared responsibility,” Rey said. To truly create global harmonization in food safety, it is necessary for all stakeholders—the public and private sectors as well as academia and consumers—to join in one collaborative food safety effort, not only for public health, country economies, and social stability, but also for business profitability and sustainability. “Private/public partnerships can help bridge the gap between regulatory enforcement and business initiatives,” Rey said.

Additionally, as discussed in the QA May/June 2013 cover story (Walmart Drives Food Safety Standards), the GFSI-based supplier requirements of Walmart and other major retailers are mandating manufacturer use of the benchmarked schemes—reinforcing Rey’s principle of big companies as trend setters. Because GFSI itself is simply a certification body with no enforcement authority, such buy-in is critical for its expansion, as is its public/private partnership focus.

The implementation of harmonized standards that provide for continuous improvement in global trade and food safety also is becoming more critical for consumer confidence in safe food delivery. Such confidence and safe global delivery will only become more important as the consumer picture continues to change. “What will make the difference in the future is increasing consumer income and the growth of the middle class,” Rey said. Consumers increasingly are desiring diversity in their foods, and have the income to afford it. At the same time, the size of the global consumer base is increasing, with estimates that the world population will reach nine billion by 2050.

Thus, he said, the future of the food industry is being shaped by “more” coming from all segments: consumers, with increasing demand; government, with ever more stringent regulations; and business, with the continually growing needs for food production, quality, and profitability. Because we already have limited farmland and fresh water, managing that, as well as food safety, will be critical, he said.
 

GFSI Key Initiatives.

To address these, and other global food issues, the current key GFSI initiatives are:

• Capacity building. This initiative is focused on raising the food safety competence of small and/or less-developed businesses (SLDBs). Because of their size, lack of technical expertise, economic resources, or nature of work, these businesses often find it difficult to meet the standards within formal supply chains where entry requirements are high. In 2008, GFSI stakeholders identified the need for technical assistance and support in SLDBs for the development of food safety management systems. So the GFSI Global Markets Technical Working Group was formed and a program developed.
  
  The program provides a tiered approach to certification enabling these businesses to put into place a systematic action plan that can be implemented over a realistic period of time. The objective is to facilitate market access locally, create mutual acceptance along the supply chain, and provide a framework for mentoring SLDBs.
  
  “The program can help the small player by at least being assured that CODEX requirements are in place,” Rey said. “It’s a really good program because it is our duty to have products meet specifications, but it is our role to help the small suppliers do so. This will help open doors for them. It is really a win win.”
  
  Danone has a personal understanding of the need for programs, because it works with local dairy farms in most of the 140 countries in which it operates. Utilizing this program to help the small dairies meet requirements helps to ensure the food safety and quality of the whole supply chain.
   
• Auditor competence. “The food industry is evolving so quickly, and many food safety crises are not due to lack of regulation but to lack of enforcement,” Rey said. “Setting regulation is easy, ensuring enforcement of that is not.
  
  “By implementing standards that are state of the art, we ensure the integrity of the program; but to enforce anything, you need the right expertise.” As such, GFSI is working with independent professional organizations to develop an online testing program to develop credentials for auditor registration to ensure the integrity of the auditing system. To integrate local requirements, strategies will need to be somewhat customized, however all will be held to a minimum level of competencies needed to pass operation audits.
   

New GFSI Leaders Take Office In March, Japan’s Cenk Gürol, group chief SCM officer, Aeon Co., and president, Aeon Global SCM, succeeded Yves Rey, corporate quality general manager, Danone, as GFSI Board Chairman. Elected as vice chairmen were Neil Marshall, global director, quality and food safety strategy, policy, and programs, The Coca-Cola Company; and Mike Robach, vice president, food safety, quality and regulatory affairs, Cargill. Under Rey’s chairmanship, GFSI progressed rapidly with its geographical expansion strategy, including the set-up of the first GFSI Local Groups. Rey has been a strong advocate of the importance of collaboration between the private and public sectors and has contributed to building partnerships with key stakeholders. “The Initiative has gained colossal momentum over the last few years in many countries,” Rey said. “Among other objectives, GFSI has a key role to play in supporting smaller suppliers in different parts of the world to build their capacity and ensure the development of effective food safety management systems. Given the growing importance of Asia and its role in the global supply chain, GFSI needs to grow its presence in this part of the world. I believe that Cenk will be instrumental in leading GFSI’s work both in Asia and around the world.“

• With this set of competencies developed and published, the technical working group is now drafting an RFP for creation of an exam; a skill assessment is being drawn up to establish the competence of candidates; and a credentialing model is being developed based on ISO 17024 to register audits. All of these are to be completed in 2014.
   
• Government recognition. Increasing global recognition of GFSI by governments and integration of GFSI with the administrative standards will strengthen global harmonization of food safety standards, Rey said. Currently GFSI is engaged in dialogue with FDA to contribute to the development of FSMA, including the Foreign Supplier Verification Program rule, and with USDA to analyze gaps between the AMS scheme and GFSI guidance document.
  
  With the Chinese government, GFSI is working to improve food safety processes. The Chinese government HACCP scheme is now being benchmarked against the GFSI guidance document, and a GFSI China local non-government organization (NGO) is being developed with government support. However, because no organization can operate in China unless it is an official NGO, little else can be done in the country until GFSI status as an NGO is approved by the government.
  
  To aid in the government recognition initiative, GFSI is working on an efficiency study through which it is developing mechanisms to gather and analyze data to demonstrate the efficacy of GFSI strategy, including productivity, profit, and quality, along with food safety.

Global Awareness.

As a self-policing, non-regulatory initiative, GFSI is dependent on voluntary acceptance—or customer mandating—of its standards to reach its mission of “safe food for consumers everywhere” through “one certification accepted everywhere.” But such global acceptance is dependent on attaining awareness, developed through communication and understanding.

Through the development and continuous improvement of successfully benchmarked schemes, applicable from farm to fork, GFSI has gained momentum and recognition. To continue this growth, Rey said, “Communication is of critical importance to making our role clear and understandable.” Key to that communication is reinforcing the importance and the benefits of a global standard for food safety and consumer trust. “Safety and conformity beget superiority; and if you get superiority, you get loyalty,” Rey said. “Loyalty is paramount for business profitability, and you have to have trust to get loyalty.”

As Rey passed over the chairmanship of the global initiative that he led for the past two years, what does he see as the greatest accomplishments and needs of GFSI? “We are making progress in reducing food safety risk, but what we haven’t achieved right now is reducing food safety cost,” he said. “We are pretty good with risk—zero risk doesn’t exist. But there is a gap between food safety risk and the cost to achieve it.”

One reason for this, he said, is because it is has not yet completely achieved its goal of “one certification accepted everywhere.” GFSI is being applied around the world, but there is still duplication of cost, with many manufacturers still having to undergo numerous different audits for various certifications and customer approval.

But with the “no borders” aspects of food safety, the wide acceptance and conformity GFSI has attained, and its ongoing programs and progress, Rey sees continued expansion and acceptance ahead.

“For GFSI,” Rey said, “the sky is the limit.”

The author is Editor of QA magazine. She can be reached at llupo@gie.net.