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Cor Groenveld, LRQA, reports from day 1 of the GIFSQ event
12th November 2010 by Cor Groenveld
CIFSQ Event – November 2010 – Day One podcast blog from Cor Groenveld, Global Product Manager Food at LRQA.
Read the post below or listen to the podcast!
Hello. I am speaking to you now from China. I’m in Shanghai and attending a Food Safety Conference. The China International Food Safety & Quality Conference that is organised every year in China. Here you find stakeholders from all over the supply chain, because with 1.3 billion people, food and food safety are amongst the most important issues for governments, but also for food manufacturers, retailers, and everyone involved in the food supply chain.
Almost 1,000 delegates from all over the world are attending here. As you know food safety with so many people, has top priority with the governments, and this is a statement that you find in the brochure of the conference, and also on the website and its coming from the Vice Premier, Li Keqiang.
Also this morning there was a presentation from Yu Taiwei. Yu Taiwei is the Director General of the Bureau of Import and Export of Food Safety, and he made it very clear that food safety is top priority. Last week they had the Expo, the World Expo here in China, it was also in Shanghai, and he was very proud by telling that there was no food issue during the world expo, so you can see how important these things are for the government. He also said that the government is taking a lot of measures and a lot of actions to protect the food but that they cannot do it alone, and he also mentioned that third party certification and also inspection has to help the government to ensure food safety.
Also, it’s very important that the Import and Export is protected, and he said what we need is a farm to fork approach because the food supply chain is a very complicated chain, that’s why he said stakeholders have to cooperate with each other, not only governments but also the food manufacturers, the retailers and also certification bodies can help with that.
Another presentation which was very interesting was from Michael Taylor from the FDA, Food and Drug Administration in the USA. He is the Deputy Commissioner for Foods. He said also we have a lot of interest in working together, when you have food coming from China to the USA, but also when we have import in the USA, food from other companies. He said it’s a joint responsibility to ensure that food safety for trading is effective. He mentioned that President Obama has initiated a high level food safety working group, and they have to work on the prevention model, that prevention model has to ensure that the food hazards are identified in the food supply chain and that the right measures will be taken. He said the first responsibility for food safety is of course by the manufacturers, but we need more, we need science he said, science to understand where the potential hazards are and also how to prevent or to reduce them. 150 countries are exporting now to the USA, and that is a high responsibility, he said we have to engage with foreign governments, we have to make sure that we ourselves, the FDA, do inspections abroad, mainly for the high-risk facilities. But he said we cannot do it alone, he explicitly mentioned that the third party certification has to help the FDA, and also he said that Codex, Codex Alimentarius plays an important role to shed out the guidance and also the rules for food safety.
Tomorrow, I will give a presentation on the global food safety picture and specifically about audits and certification in the food supply chain. I will talk about what the big concerns are in the food supply chain, also I give a picture about the private standards and certification, FSSC 22000, that’s the certification scheme covering ISO22000 and the PAS220. Last but not least we also need harmonisation of audits and certification and there are some initiatives that might help with it.
Cor Groenveld is the Global Product Manager for the food services of Lloyd’s Register Quality Assurance Ltd. (LRQA) . He has a degree in Food Technology and worked for 10 years in the food industry before joining LRQA. His background includes being a Quality Assurance Manager, working in product development and production as well as [...]