GFSI and UNIDO solidify food safety partnership

The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to signal their commitment to a large-scale partnership for food safety.

The partnership will harness the experience and knowledge of both global organisations in order to implement “a roadmap for scaling up” by developing large-scale food safety capability building projects in a number of key regions in the global food supply network.

This development program will be based on the GFSI Global Markets Programme, which sets out how small or less developed food companies can meet the challenge of food safety and gain market access. It will be enabled by UNIDO, benefiting from their specialised experience in industrial development capability building.

According to a roadmap which is currently being crafted, this far-reaching food safety capability program will be implemented in a number of key geographies, starting with China, South-East Asia and Africa before being continued in further regions.

• In China, the partnership aims to scale up food safety capacity building for local food enterprises throughout China in line with the Sustainable Supplier Development Programme (SSDP) and establish the China Food Safety Initiative (CFSI).
• In South-East Asia, the aim is to initiate a regional SSDP program, scaling up the UNIDO-AEON Malaysia SSDP program into a multicountry and multibuyer initiative.
• In Africa, the project will benefit from a strong UNIDO presence to design and build a joint UNIDO-GFSI multicountry, multibuyer project for Africa on capacity building.

Originally published here.