'The Global Food Safety Initiative was launched in 2000 after a global task force was created and the first International Food Safety Conference was held in May 2001,' Byrnes began.

Quoting Codex Alimentarius, Byrnes said it was simply the 'assurance that food will not cause harm to the consumer when it is prepared and/ or eaten according to its intended use'.

Byrnes said that is it obvious retailers want to sell products which are safe to their consumers and which will not cause any harm. As such, GFSI has released a new logo.

'The retailer first looks to see if food is available. If it is, then food safety becomes the first priority,' said Byrnes. 'Food safety comes before food quality.'

Recognising this, the logo aims to represent GFSI, which has implemented a scheme to benchmark food safety standards worldwide, as well as effectively building and implementing an international early warning system.

As a benchmark model of the way food safety used to be, Byrnes stated: 'Retailers performed inspections or audits of their supplies themselves, or asked a third party to do this. Inspections or audits took place on a national scale. No true international certification and accreditation schemes were in place, which meant there were incomparable auditing results.'

Now, with the new logo and system, there may still be no standard but the GFSI is identifying a way to make existing standards more universally understood and accepted.

'Writing a new standard is a very long and difficult process,' explained Byrnes. 'No existing standards are good enough to qualify as the global standard. But we do know what we want and have defined a criteria. Key elements are a food safety management system, good practices and a conformation to HACCP specifications.'

The third edition of the GFSI guidance document will be available in two to three weeks on its website: www.globalfoodsafety.com

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