Public and Private Food Safety Standards: Facilitating or Frustrating Fresh Produce Growers?

Abstract

Global private food safety and quality standards have undergone some major overhauls during the past two decades, and these will continue to evolve with the recent emphasis on harmonization. The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) attempts to ensure that harmonize retail standards are commendable and elegant in principle, but in practice, retailers continue to demand their own standard, whilst supporting GFSI’s benchmarking program. It is difficult to see such retailers giving up their own standards and the control they currently exert as chain captains. There is also the risk that too much harmonization will result in these standards losing their individuality and uniqueness. Amidst the struggle for private standard dominance, alternative approaches to risk management (e.g., self-assessment of risk, independent audits and risk ranking) may be the way forward, similar to how insurance risks are calculated for businesses. Furthermore, this risk-based approach could also lead to the effective implementation of co-regulation, where both public and private sector compliances are addressed together—a win-win situation. This paper considers the implications and future trends of fresh produce farming, and identifies five interventions (i.e., assurance schemes), which include the do-nothing scenario to underpinning one’s brand or label with an existing scheme

Irrigation Water Quality for Leafy Crops: A Perspective of Risks and Potential Solutions

“…In the early 1990s the UK fresh produce supply chain started to develop Quality Assurance Schemes (QAS) also known as Retailer Codes of Practice partly in response to the 1990 UK Food Safety Act that required growers to be treated as running food businesses within a consolidated supply and as a consequence growers were exposed to due diligence imposed from the retail end of the supply chain [ 51 , 52 ]. Amongst these QAS were Assured Produce–1991; Tesco Natures Choice–1992 and, more widely relevant, EurepGAP–1997 [ 53 ].…”

“…The QAS increased their focus on microbial risks associated with irrigation water and a new generation of schemes (e.g., Red Tractor Fresh Produce Scheme, GlobalGAP, Tesco Nurture, M&S Field to Fork version 2) was developed in the 2000s [ 51 ]. As with the first generation of schemes, growers were still required to develop and implement management systems along HACCP principles and to risk assess all water sources.…”

European private food safety standards in global agri-food supply chains: a systematic review

“…However, many others go on to classify private standards based on scope, geographical reach, nature of the founding organisation, and other characteristics. Standards have been classified as mainstream and niche (Burrell, 2011), horizontal andvertical (García et al, 2004), legally-mandated and voluntary (Henson and Humphrey, 2010), post-farm gate and pre-farm gate (Soon and Baines, 2013), collective and business-specific (Henson, 2008) among others. Several of these have some common characteristics.…”

Enhancing the International Competitiveness of Indonesian Food and Beverage Industry Through Facilitating the Adoption of Quality Assurance Programs

“…On the other hand, it can be argued that the barriers and constraints tothe adoption of quality assurance system by SMEs can be grouped into two main categories : internal barriers and external barriers (Soon and Baines, 2013). The internal barriers include : (5) the lack of information (13.0%).…”