Food Protection Trends - January/February 2021 - 134

Number of Attendees:11.

Minutes Recording Secretary: Tracie Sheehan.

Meeting Called to Order: 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time, Thursday, September
24, 2020.

Old Business: Approved the 2019 meeting minutes without dissention.
Andrew Clarke was approved by the Board to take over as Chair of the
Food Safety Assessment, Auditing and Inspection PDG.

Minutes Recording Secretary: Kimberly Yeager.
The Anti-trust Statement from the IAFP was read by Outgoing Chair
Nick Forshee.
There were no Committee or PDG Announcements shared at the
meeting this year.
Old Business:
Minutes from the last meeting (and all previous meetings) held
on July 21, 2019 are available at Minutes from the last meeting (and
all previous meetings) held on July 21, 2019 are available at https://
www.foodprotection.org/get-involved/professional-development-groups/
food-packaging-pdg/. No members objected to the acceptance of the
meeting minutes from the meeting of July 21, 2019. IAFP Members were
reminded that they can directly update their PDG affiliations online and
that information would be in the minutes. (Log onto the IAFP Website; on
the Member Dashboard click Edit Profile, then the Professional Info tab.
They can then select any PDG to add or delete.)
This years' Annual Meeting will be IAFP 2020, A Virtual Annual
Meeting, October 26-28, 2020. The Food Packaging related program
items are: (i) Microbiomes and Plastispheres - Effects of Plastic Pollution
on Food Safety (Symposia), (ii) Novel Technologies for Extended Shelf
Life (Symposia), and (iii) Plastics and the Environment: How Industry is
Responding to the Need for Change (Roundtable Discussion).
New Business:
IAFP Connect Food Packaging PDG Community was mentioned
again-and that IAFP Connect is the only means of communication
among members of the PDG. The members were reminded that the
group was given information last year by Kim about IAFP Connect and
how to log in and access our community, and that this information would
be shared again in the meeting minutes. (Link: https://connect.foodprotection.org/home; Food Packaging PDG Community, go to https://connect.
foodprotection.org/communities/community-home/digestviewer?communitykey=246716cf-70bf-459e-bd79-93aef8c33987&tab=digestviewer).
You must be logged into the IAFP website to access IAFP Connect.
For our annual PDG meeting, we welcomed Dr. Xinhui Li, Associate
Professor of Microbiology at UW-La Crosse, who presented his work on
development of antiviral edible films. This topic was considered to be particularly timely in light of the current COVID-19 pandemic. Interest in this
topic and other potential antiviral topics for the 2021 meeting is obviously
high this year.
New Symposium Topics Brainstorming and Development was the
next item on the meeting agenda. The deadline for IAFP 2021 symposia,
roundtable and workshop proposals is November 10, 2020 (No late submissions will be accepted). Due to time constraints and to low attendance
numbers, a second meeting will be held to discuss new symposium topics
for 2021 and to organize sub-teams to develop the submissions for the
PDG. Kim Yeager will send out a meeting invite via IAFP Connect for that
meeting shortly.
Recommendations to the Executive Board:
1.

Recommend the appointment of Tony Jin as Vice Chairperson of
the Food Packaging PDG for a two-year term beginning at the 2020
meeting, and to then serve as Chairperson as a two-year term
immediately following.

Next Meeting Date: July 18-21, 2021, Phoenix, Arizona.
Meeting Adjourned: 5:52 p.m. Eastern Time.
Chairperson: Kimberly Yeager.

Food Safety Assessment, Audit and Inspection PDG
Attendees: Andrew Clarke (Chair), Tracie Sheehan (Vice Chair), Adeniyi
Odugbemi, Erica Sheward, Hannah Bolinger, Kim Onett, Loralyn Ledenbach,
Marie-Claude Quentin, Martin Fowell, Thomas Spoden, William Huntley,
Yige Bima, and Yvonne Masters.
Staff Present: Didi Loynachan and Dina Siedenburg.
Number of Attendees: 15.
Meeting Called to Order: 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time, Monday, September
14, 2020.

134

Food Protection Trends January/February

New Business: Andrew Clarke opened the meeting, shared the mission
and provided the Anti-Trust Guidelines to the attendees. Tracie Sheehan
was nominated to take over as Vice Chair for the PDG pending Board
approval and requested to take meeting minutes.
Andrew Clarke invited two guest speakers from GFSI (Global Food
Safety Initiative), Erica Sheward (GFSI Director) and Marie-Claude
Quentin (GFSI Senior Technical Manager). They provided an introduction
to GFSI, the current position on remote auditing, and the strategy for
Race to the Top and key features. GFSI has been part of the Consumer
Goods Forum for 20 years as a not-for-profit organization with a mission
of safe food to consumers everywhere. The GFSI position on remote
auditing supports the use of information and communication technologies
(ICT), believes parts of the audit need to be onsite, continuously reviews
this position and is seeking data and evidence of efficacy. They have a
project working with academia to conduct literature reviews and review independent data on the efficacy of remote auditing. They believe ICT can
be used for auditor qualification and other activities. The Race to the Top
strategy started after the Board challenged GFSI that the quality of the
audit outputs, the independence, and the lack of quality oversight may be
failing. The Board stated that there is discrepancy between GFSI audits
and company's internal audits of suppliers. The Race to the Top has the
following features:
Feature 1 - GFSI benchmarking requirements for food safety,
auditor training, and Certification Program Owner (CPO) key performance
indicators (KPIs). There is a need to professionalize the auditor training
similar to a financial auditor. GFSI should set the requirements on CPOs
to monitor technical competence.
Feature 2 - CPOs need to be responsible for continuous self-monitoring and improvement of standards with GFSI monitoring CPO performance.
Feature 3 - Certification Body (CB) collaborative management
platform - there is oversight of CBs by the CPOs, the ABs (Accreditation
Bodies) and GFSI.
Feature 4 - GFSI recognized certificate repository for certifications
from all CPOs through an electronic transfer so that CBs don't have to
load directly to GFSI. This will create one source of GFSI Certificates for
companies to check their suppliers.
Stakeholder groups can be involved in the process. A question was
asked about the CPOs issuing new fully remote audits and GFSI stated
that fully remote audits are not considered benchmarked. They agreed
that it needs to be very clear to customers if the certificate is GFSI benchmarked or not. The CPO contract with GFSI is clear that communication
of the differences to customers is required. A question was asked about
timelines for the plan and GFSI stated that Feature 1 will be Q1 2021,
Feature 2 will be end of 2020 for KPIs for CPOs, Feature 3 is working
with the IAF task force by end of Jan. 2021, and Feature 4 the database
should be live in 2021. GFSI will be engaging at the annual IAFP conference 2020 with a virtual booth. A question was asked if ASQ certification
should be a requirement for auditors. They acknowledged this was a
good training program but is not available or known globally. Andrew
shared that he had posted the Race to the Top on the Audit PDG site and
perhaps our PDG could share the GFSI training proposal with the student
PDG group for feedback.
Andrew thanked GFSI for sharing the presentation and they left the
meeting.
Andrew shared the following three proposals with brief summaries:
1) Symposia - Raising the Food Safety Bar in Auditing: Leveraging Best
Practices between Internal Audits, GFSI Audits and Customer Audits; 2)
Roundtable - GFSI Audits Chain of Custody - removing confusion and
regaining confidence, and 3) Symposia - Law and Order Versus Criminal
Minds.
Other possible sessions were proposed on either auditor fatigue or
celebrating auditor successes. Andrew suggested reviewing the 2019
minutes for topics. A suggestion was made for a workshop prior to the
2021 IAFP on auditor training with GFSI. It was noted that the attendance
on this call was low and should we reach out to the auditing community to
bring more auditors and regulatory inspectors to the committee. Andrew

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