As it approaches the twentieth anniversary of its original foundation as a certification partnership, GlobalGAP has identified greater efficiency in terms of auditing as a key priority for the next few years.
In an exclusive interview with Eurofruit published in the magazine’s January 2016 issue, chief executive Kristian Moeller and chairman Guy Callebaut said the continued drive toward greater harmonisation of industry standards would involved efforts to digitise more of the reporting involved and reduce the number of hours spent by auditors on site with suppliers.
“[The system] is currently too driven by people and human observation, sending auditors and getting them to put on their police helmets to check farms,” commented Moeller. “This is not good for either side.”
GlobalGAP is understood to be exploring various options including greater use of information technology and increased automation in order to make that efficiency a reality.
According to Cellebaut, some of that work could be reasonably straightforward to introduce: “As farmers, we already have lots of digitised documents that we then print out and give to the auditors. The point is, you can develop a checklist and then digitalise this automatically.”
