U.S – GLOBALG.A.P. North America, Inc., a farm assurance program, has announced the launch of GLOBALG.A.P.’s revised Integrated Farm Assurance (IFA) standard Version 6 and the GLOBALG.A.P. Risk Assessment on Social Practice (GRASP) add-on Version 2.
The new products, representing the first implementation stage of the new smart farm assurance solutions vision, offer streamlined, impact-driven, and connected solutions for the entire sector.
The launch was marked by a live online event hosted by GLOBALG.A.P. and Fruitnet Media International featuring pre-recorded content in English and Spanish.
Marking the sixth version of GLOBALG.A.P.’s flagship offering, the new IFA standard is available for fruit and vegetables, aquaculture, flowers and ornamentals and hops.
With over 200,000 producers worldwide already certified to IFA, v6 continues to take a holistic approach to farm assurance through the key topics of food safety, environmental sustainability, animal welfare, worker’s well-being, traceability, and production processes.
“IFA v6 is GLOBALG.A.P.’s flagship standard in a new and improved format. It has a simplified structure and language, extended criteria on key issues such as sustainability and animal welfare, and – for the first time – continuous improvement at the producer level. Overall, it’s a smarter standard, fit for the future,” stated Dr. Elmé Coetzer-Boersma, Managing Director, GLOBALG.A.P.
With a focus on the producer’s experience, IFA v6 offers streamlined, customized checklists that reduce duplication and simplify the audit process at the farm level.
IFA v6 is available in two parallel editions – v6 Smart, the flagship offering, and v6 GFS for those requiring GFSI recognition, as reported by Perishable News.
On the other hand, GRASP has seen increased adoption across the sector, with over 110,000 producers successfully demonstrating compliance at the close of 2021.
Version 2 of the add-on tackles some of the most pressing social issues facing the global supply chain including worker exploitation, child labor, and human rights.
GRASP can be assessed at the same time as the IFA audit, providing a cost-effective way for producers to demonstrate social responsibility practices and for retailers to transparently source products from operations that are aligned to their corporate social responsibility policies.
Assessment is complemented by national interpretation guidelines of local legislation to help assessors and producers to understand local compliance systems.
A country risk classification based on the Worldwide Governance Indicators issued by the World Bank also allows flexibility in evidence methods.
GRASP is applicable to all production under IFA and is available for all sizes of farms, including smallholders.
GLOBALG.A.P. will be running a free smart farm assurance solutions webinar series on the updated product range.
Focusing on the new versions of IFA and GRASP, the webinars will take an in-depth and scope-specific look at everything connected with the standard and add-on, including new and revised content, the two editions of IFA v6 (Smart and GFS), compliance requirements, GLOBALG.A.P. IT systems, and much more.
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