The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), part of The Consumer Goods Forum, has launched two new video projects that bring together the expertise and dedication of GFSI’s stakeholders, including voices from IAF. The first, a campaign to promote the first World Food Safety Day on 07 June 2019, illustrates the international momentum around the mission to provide safe food. The second, the all-new GFSI Experts Series, gives influential figures such as IAF Director Marcus Long and IAF Co-Convener Skip Greenaway a platform to explain the importance of accreditation, certification, and other tools.

World Food Safety Day

In December 2018, the United Nations General Assembly voted to recognize 07 June as World Food Safety Day. From 2019 on, World Food Safety Day will be an annual opportunity to draw international attention to the importance of safe food. In collaboration with Codex Alimentarius, GFSI has embarked on a campaign to spread awareness of World Food Safety Day and its mission.

At the GFSI Conference 2019 in Nice, GFSI Director Véronique Discours-Buhot invited stakeholders to illustrate their own dedication to safe food through videos or photographs and share them via Twitter. The submissions were collected into a mashup video for publication on the first World Food Safety Day.

Submissions are still being collected in preparation for the GFSI Conference 2020, which will coincide with GFSI’s 20th anniversary. IAF members are invited to submit photos and videos that demonstrate their food safety commitment to @myGFSI with the hashtags #WorldFoodSafetyDay and #GFSIbirthday. A selection of submissions will be shared at the GFSI Conference 2020 in Seattle.

GFSI Experts Series

In April, GFSI launched the new GFSI Experts Series, a curated, open-access collection of interviews with influential figures in food safety. New episodes are released every week on the GFSI website in both video and transcript form.

The 04 June episode features Marcus Long, IAF Director and Chief Executive of IIOC, and Skip Greenaway, IAF Co-Convener and Chairman of Eagle Certification Group. In their interviews, Long and Greenaway emphasize the importance of the long, productive partnership between IAF and GFSI. They also suggest possible ways to deepen this relationship, including jointly promoting World Accreditation Day on 09 June — which now falls conveniently near World Food Safety Day on 07 June.

Future episodes of the GFSI Experts Series will feature accredited Certification Program Owners (CPOs) including CanadaGAP (release date 02 July), FSSC 22000 (16 July) and GAA (03 September), among a broad selection of leaders from the food industry, academia, and the public sector. Viewers can be notified about episodes by subscribing to the GFSI YouTube channel and following #GFSIexperts on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.

GFSI hopes that IAF members will participate and benefit from these projects, which together give a face to the wide cross-section of stakeholders involved in providing safe food. To stay up to date on these and other GFSI projects, please subscribe to the GFSI News mailing list.