You didn’t hear it here first: standards will continue to grow more stringent for matters such as food safety, worker rights, and environmental governance.
Compliance with them is becoming a matter of policy for major purchasers, such as retail grocery chains. How can suppliers prove they are conforming to these increasingly rigorous criteria?
One answer lies in certification: a third-party assurance that your company is meeting a certain set of standards.
One of the most prominent compliance certification systems is GLOBALG.A.P. (the letters stand for Good Agricultural Practice), which now operates in over 135 countries, with over 200,000 active certificates worldwide.
Global G.A.P. provides an “accredited standard,” says Astrid Goplen, a GLOBALG.A.P. registered trainer for California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF). “Growers can apply to get a certification that covers food safety, sustainability, worker health,” and many other criteria. GLOBALG.A.P. is designed primarily for growers as opposed to many other certification agencies, which focus on food manufacture.
The main form of certification is Integrated Farm Assurance (IFA), a “flagship standard” which, Goplen says, accounts for more than 90 percent of the certificates issued, covering matters such as conservation practices, worker health, and traceability. “Traceability is a very important component,” says Goplen; “if there are food safety outbreaks, these certifications allow us to trace back to the culprit.”
Although CCOF coordinates the program in this country, GLOBALG.A.P. is not for organic farmers only. Indeed, she points out, it is “for any producer who needs to sell to a major retailer.” (Nonetheless, organic certification continues to be an option via CCOF.)
The first step is for growers to decide what they want to certify on: they need to “look at what their buyers are requiring,” says Goplen. After conducting a self-assessment using a checklist provided (GLOBALG.A.P. trainers can help with this process), they contact a GLOBALG.A.P. certification body, of which there are around 20 in the United States.
This body will issue a GLOBALG.A.P. number (GGN), which will remain with the grower permanently, like a Social Security number.
The certification body will then send out an auditor. “Once you successfully comply with the standard’s requirements, you will receive a GLOBALG.A.P. certificate for the relevant version and scope. The certificate is valid for one year,” says the GLOBALG.A.P. website. More than one visit may be needed, say, to evaluate harvest operations.
The auditor “may or may not assign some nonconformances,” says Goplen. “As requirements change, growers might not have caught up.” In the first year, producers generally have 28 days to correct areas of noncompliance.
“Starting with the day the certification process is completed, the certification lasts for a year, minus a day,” Goplen says. Annual recertification is necessary, because it is part of the certification process that verification of compliance by an auditor needs to take place annually. Walmart, she notes, accepts the GLOBAL G.A.P. IFA standard for their new requirements for pollinator health protection verification, which will come into effect starting in 2025.
GLOBALG.A.P. began in 1997 as EUREPGAP, an initiative by retailers belonging to the Euro-Retailer Produce Working Group, as British retailers, working with supermarkets in continental Europe, became aware of consumers’ growing concerns regarding product safety, environmental impact, and the welfare of workers and animals.
“Over the next ten years the process spread throughout the continent and beyond,” notes the GLOBALG.A.P. website. “GLOBALG.A.P. today is the world’s leading farm assurance program, translating consumer requirements into Good Agricultural Practice in a rapidly growing list of countries.”
Editor’s note: This article was revised to more accurately describe the certifications involved.
