The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) has partnered with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) to work on “food safety capacity building” in China, and on a global scale.

Overall, GFSI and UNIDO support food safety as a shared responsibility, and they will work to “improve understanding of the importance of effective engagement of the industry in advancing food safety globally.” Specifically, both groups plan to design public/private partnerships--one being a food safety platform that focuses on identifying priority countries just like China--then mobilize resources for their implementation.

These new endeavors are not the first partnership between GFSI and UNIDO. The groups have experienced “successful collaborations since 2009, with the design and implementation of food safety capacity building projects in a number of countries thanks to the GFSI Global Markets Program.”

“At the global level, UNIDO has been actively involved as a member and key partner of the Global Food Safety Initiative’s food safety capacity building program” says UNIDO Director General Mr. Li Yong. “Over the past 6 years, projects have been implemented in Egypt, India, Malaysia and Ukraine, in partnership with a number of GFSI private sector company members such as Metro, AEON and Pick N Pay.”

"GFSI and The Consumer Goods Forum are pleased to collaborate with UNIDO to lead the way in food safety development through capacity building” says GFSI chairman Cenk Curol. “Food operations worldwide are coming under increasing pressure to consistently deliver safe food in the face of growing demands and ever more complex supply chains. These challenges cannot be overcome without sweeping global partnerships and ambitious development programmes such as those put forward within this collaboration.”

The partnership between GFSI and UNIDO was announced at the 4th Annual GFSI Focus Day China, an event attended by over 300 food safety professionals.

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