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April 8, 2021
With the increasing importance of food safety, traceability, and social and environmental responsibility, produce shippers must look to integrated solutions to certify their operations. The time, energy, and associated costs of reaching and maintaining food-safety certification are overwhelming for many in the industry. GLOBALG.A.P. North America serves the unique needs of farmers and buyers in Canada and the United States to protect their brand and mitigate their risk. “We engage suppliers and buyers in the U.S. and around the world to define the most practical and relevant production criteria and audit systems, and deploy with the highest levels of integrity to meet market needs,” said Roberta Anderson, executive vice president of GLOBALG.A.P. North America.
GLOBALG.A.P.: New certification, growth and audits during the pandemic
25 years ago, a group of retailers and supermarkets in Europe agreed to harmonize their requirements into an independent certification system that could be broadly applied and accepted, to avoid growers having to have multiple and often redundant audits in order to supply different buyers. These retailers and supermarkets became the founding members of GLOBALG.A.P., which has evolved over the past two decades to become one of the most preferred certification programs by global retailers and markets. Currently, over 200,000 farmers in over 135 countries have been certified according to GLOBALG.A.P. standards.