The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (Unido) and the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) have signed a memorandum of understanding to signal their commitment to a large-scale partnership on building their food safety capabilities.
The partnership sets out to harness the experience and knowledge of both 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, the two parties said in a joint statement.
The development scheme will be based on the GFSI Global Markets Programme, which sets out how smaller food companies can meet the challenge of food safety and gain market access. It will be enabled by Unido, benefiting from its specialised experience in industrial development capability building.
According to a roadmap that is currently being crafted, this far-reaching food safety capability programme will be implemented in a number of key geographies, starting with China, Southeast Asia and Africa, before being extended to additional regions.
In China, the partnership will aim 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 Southeast Asia, the aim is to initiate a regional SSDP programme, scaling up Unido’s existing SSDP programme in Malaysia, launched in collaboration with Japanese retailer Aeon, into a multi-country and multi-buyer initiative.
In Africa, the project will benefit from a strong Unido presence, designing and building a joint project between Unido and GFSI.
Philippe Scholtès, managing director, programme development and technical cooperation for Unido, said: “The World Health Organization estimates that up to 600 million people fall ill every year after eating contaminated food. Our collaboration with GFSI will further strengthen and promote multiple benefits of safe food for social inclusiveness, sustainability and industrial development.”
Mike Robach, chair of the GFSI board of directors, added: “We are very enthusiastic about the potential to have a bigger impact in these key regions thanks to this collaboration with Unido. Multi-sector collaboration is the way forward in achieving food safety across borders and barriers. Our joint efforts within this partnership will take us further and faster towards our vision of safe food for consumers, everywhere.”
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