GLOBALG.A.P. recently achieved ISEAL Community Member status following a rigorous months-long qualification process. ISEAL supports ambitious sustainability systems and its partners to tackle the world’s most pressing challenges, driving improvement by defining credible practices, convening forums for collaboration, providing training, and promoting innovation.
Our trusted farm assurance solutions have included a major sustainability component ever since they were first developed over 25 years ago. As an ISEAL Community Member, we will now have a broader platform on which to contribute our decisive input and expertise, gained from decades of experience in sustainability, to our fellow ISEAL Community Members and their sustainability systems.
“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.”
What does membership mean?
By becoming an ISEAL Community Member, we are highlighting our enduring dedication to sustainability, and, at the same time, signaling our commitment to continuous improvement. Having existing sustainability measures and concrete steps for future improvements are important aspects that ISEAL considers when assessing prospective ISEAL Community Members.
“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.”
What are benefits of membership?
ISEAL Community Members get exclusive access to special insights, support, and collaboration opportunities. We will be collaborating with well-known ISEAL Community Members and their sustainability systems from industries as diverse as aluminum, golf, cotton, tourism, and fishing, to tackle the world’s most pressing 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.
Being an ISEAL Community Member will also allow us to deliver greater value to stakeholders by improving our system’s effectiveness with ISEAL’s guidance. Seeking and achieving ISEAL Community Member status also lends value to our assurance products – including the consumer-facing GGN label – by adding further tangible evidence of our ongoing investment in the development of effective sustainability measures.
Membership pairs well with IFA v6’s emphasis on sustainability
This new membership closely follows the publication of version 6 of our 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.
What did it take to become an ISEAL Community Member?
To qualify as an ISEAL Community Member, we had to conduct a self-assessed gap analysis against the desired outcomes of the ISEAL Standard-Setting, Assurance, and Impacts Codes, and draft an improvement plan defining objectives and areas that need special attention. We are also developing a monitoring and evaluation system, which ISEAL requires for systems to achieve ISEAL Code Compliant status. GLOBALG.A.P. will be pursuing ISEAL Code Compliant status in the near future.
Read here to find out how GLOBALG.A.P.’s tools can improve your farm’s impact on sustainability and open avenues to more markets for your products.