GlobalG.A.P. approved as ISEAL Community Member

GlobalG.A.P. was recently approved as an ISEAL Community Member following a months-long qualification process.

ISEAL supports ambitious sustainability systems to tackle the world’s most pressing challenges. With its growing global network and focus on credible practices, ISEAL drives impact and makes markets a force for good. “GlobalG.A.P. is proud to have achieved ISEAL Community Member status and to have gained an important partner in ISEAL,” said Dr. Kristian Moeller, Managing Director at GlobalG.A.P. “This is a further step on our important mission towards broader sustainability recognition. We are delighted that our long-standing commitment to sustainability is bearing fruit.”

GlobalG.A.P. will be collaborating with other well-known ISEAL Community Members and their sustainability systems from industries as diverse as aluminum, golf, cotton, tourism, and fishing to cope with the biggest environmental problems. “As a new ISEAL Community Member, we look forward to continuously improving our system and further enhancing our solutions by participating in ISEAL’s learning, collaboration, and innovation activities,” said Dr. Moeller.

“I would like to congratulate GlobalG.A.P. on becoming an ISEAL Community Member,” said Karin Kreider, Executive Director of ISEAL. “This exciting step reflects GlobalG.A.P.’s commitment to ongoing improvement and deepening their credible practices as they work to improve food safety on farms across the globe while safeguarding the welfare of farming communities and their surrounding environments.”
GlobalG.A.P.’s trusted farm assurance solutions have included a major sustainability component since they were first developed over 25 years ago. The company will now lend valuable support to the global sustainability efforts of fellow ISEAL Community Member systems by contributing decisive input and know-how gained from those decades of experience in sustainability. Becoming an ISEAL Community Member further highlights GlobalG.A.P.’s dedication to sustainability and signals GlobalG.A.P.’s commitment to continuous improvement through the special insights, support, and collaboration opportunities available to ISEAL Community Members.

To qualify as an ISEAL Community Member, GlobalG.A.P. conducted a self-assessed gap analysis against the desired outcomes of the ISEAL Standard-Setting, Assurance, and Impacts Codes and drafted an improvement plan defining objectives and areas that need special attention. GlobalG.A.P. is also developing a monitoring and evaluation system, which will play an important role as GlobalG.A.P. takes the next steps toward achieving ISEAL Code Compliant status.
This new membership closely follows the publication of version 6 of GlobalG.A.P.’s flagship Integrated Farm Assurance (IFA) standard. IFA v6 gives environmental sustainability greater visibility by encouraging the continuous improvement of sustainability practices among participating producers and by adding more sustainability-oriented principles and criteria to the standard. The food safety and aquaculture aspects of IFA v6 have already achieved GFSI (Global Food Safety Initiative) and GSSI (Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative) recognition, respectively. GlobalG.A.P. is the first GFSI- and GSSI-recognized farm assurance system in the industry to achieve ISEAL Community Member status. “We welcome GlobalG.A.P.’s commitment to ISEAL’s ambitious requirements as a global industry standard. It underlines the efforts to continuously develop also in the field of sustainability as a recognized system – for the major environmental and social challenges in global supply chains, and this is an important step,” emphasizes Eugenio Guidoccio, Member of the Executive Board, REWE Group.

GlobalG.A.P. expects to deliver additional value to stakeholders by improving the system’s effectiveness with ISEAL’s guidance. Seeking and achieving ISEAL Community Member status also lends value to GlobalG.A.P.’s assurance products – including the consumer-facing GGN label – by adding further tangible evidence of GlobalG.A.P.’s ongoing investment in the development of effective sustainability measures.