The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), The Consumer Goods Forum’s (CGF’s) Coalition of Action on food safety, has signed an agreement with Webnet for the development of its proprietary certificate platform—a live, online repository of all certificates issued against GFSI-recognized Certification Programs, available to anyone needing to verify the validity of such certificates. 

This project, a key feature of GFSI’s Race to the Top, strongly demonstrates GFSI’s commitment to deliver trust, transparency, and confidence in food safety certification. The project is a response to the feedback of many GFSI stakeholders who reported that it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish GFSI-recognized certificates from non-recognized certificates, or to differentiate valid certificates from fraudulent ones. The new platform is, therefore, much anticipated within the GFSI community. 

To select the right partner for this critical project, GFSI ran a public request for proposals throughout August and September 2021 and conducted a series of in-depth reviews of the offers received against defined criteria linked to GFSI’s priorities, status as a not-for-profit, and ambition to improve food safety for people everywhere. At the end of this stringent and comprehensive process, Webnet scored the highest with its offer to develop a fully customized solution that will be owned by CGF and answer GFSI’s specific requirements.

As part of its development, GFSI’s certificate platform will go through a series of tests, for which GFSI will be calling on volunteers from targeted user groups.