Top 5 Challenges in Achieving GFSI Certification for Food Manufacturers

Your GFSI audit is in six months. Your documentation is scattered across spreadsheets, filing cabinets, and multiple systems. Sound familiar? Many food manufacturers struggle with challenges that can derail certification, leading to costly delays and extended preparation time.

Readying your company for an audit can be time-consuming and disruptive to daily operations, and true audit preparedness means not simply producing the necessary documentation but embracing a food safety culture throughout your plant.

To become Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) certified, your company must achieve a successful third-party audit against a GFSI-recognized program. Choosing the right GFSI-recognized program starts with evaluating your operation's structure and risk level. Key factors include the number of locations and employees, the complexity of your HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) plans, and whether you handle high- or low-risk products. You should also consider customer requirements and market expectations to ensure the certification aligns with your business needs and compliance goals.

Here are some of the GFSI-recognized certification programs to choose from:

• SQF: To be certified through the Safe Quality Food (SQF) Institute, food companies must go through a three-step process to demonstrate comprehensive implementation of food safety and quality management systems. SQF is recognized for its inclusion of a distinct quality module alongside food safety, setting it apart from many other programs. 

• FSSC 22000: More than 18,000 companies in over 140 nations have received certification in FSSC 22000, which is based on existing ISO standards. There are more than 1,500 auditors across the globe and 110 licensed certification bodies in place.

• BRC: BRC Global Standards is the largest global GFSI scheme. It is divided into seven sections: senior management commitment and continual improvement, HACCP, food safety and quality management system, site standards, product control, process control, and personnel.

• Primus: PrimusGFS is a GFSI benchmarked standard, best known for its recognition by buyers in the Western hemisphere. The audit scheme is endorsed by more than 2,000 growers and provides total produce supply chain coverage.

• IFS: International Featured Standards (IFS) is used to audit food manufacturers regarding safety and quality of processes. Requirements are organized into six categories, including: 

  • Senior management responsibility

  • Quality and food safety management system

  • Resource management

  • Planning and production process

  • Measurements, analysis, and improvements

  • Food defense

• Global G.A.P.: Global Good Agricultural Practice (G.A.P.) is a global standard promoting safe, sustainable agriculture. Certification is available for three scopes of production, including crops, livestock, and aquaculture.

Once you have identified the program that best aligns with your operations, there are additional challenges with achieving compliance that you need to be prepared for.

Resource-Intensive Compliance Efforts

To effectively manage a GFSI program, every component must be documented and monitored. This involves creating and maintaining a wide array of detailed records to demonstrate compliance, from hazard analysis plans to routine monitoring logs. Key elements include:

• HACCP (and HARPC under FSMA) Plans: These plans form the backbone of food safety programs, requiring ongoing hazard analysis and updates as risks or processes evolve.

• Prerequisite Programs (PRPs): These foundational programs, such as cleaning and sanitation or supplier approval processes, need consistent execution and documentation.

• Good Agricultural Practices (G.A.P.) and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs): Ensuring these are up-to-date and consistently adhered to is critical for compliance and operational efficiency.

• Timely Reporting and Corrective Actions (CAPA): Nonconformances must be identified, reported, and addressed promptly to prevent recurrences and maintain compliance.

For food and beverage manufacturers, managing these requirements often involves juggling manual processes, spreadsheets, and paper records. These outdated methods are not only time-consuming but also prone to human error, increasing the risk of missed tasks, incomplete records, or audit findings. Digital platforms like SafetyChain eliminate these manual burdens by automating documentation workflows and centralizing all compliance activities in one system.

Cross-Functional Team Coordination

Compliance often requires collaboration across various departments, including production, quality assurance, and procurement. Lack of communication or siloed operations can lead to gaps in compliance, putting certification at risk.

Here are some strategies for effectively addressing challenges with team functionality:

• Define Roles and Responsibilities: Develop clear workflows and assign specific tasks to each department, ensuring no critical activities are overlooked.

• Hold Regular Cross-Functional Meetings: Schedule recurring check-ins to review compliance status, address potential issues, and align on upcoming deadlines.

• Create Training Programs: Offer cross-departmental training to build a common understanding of GFSI standards and individual contributions to compliance.

• Deploy a Centralized Platform: Implement a centralized compliance management system that integrates all departments and provides shared access to critical documentation, schedules, and reports. Centralized platforms ensure all departments work from the same real-time data, eliminating the communication gaps that derail certification efforts.

Keeping Up with Evolving Standards

GFSI certification standards are updated regularly to reflect new food safety risks, technologies, and regulations, and manufacturers need to stay informed and adapt quickly, which may involve re-training staff or upgrading systems.

Without a centralized repository for FSQA data, sifting through information is slow and inefficient. While this holds true for paper-based systems, it also applies to many electronic systems. When multiple systems are not integrated, the challenges of conducting thorough assessments of KPIs persist. Not all electronic systems are automated or designed for effective trending and performance analyses. Modern compliance platforms automatically track regulatory changes and update requirements, ensuring your team never misses critical standard updates.

Supplier Management

GFSI certification standards extend to suppliers and vendors, requiring manufacturers to verify their compliance. Managing suppliers continues to be one of the most resource-intensive challenges in the industry, and monitoring vendors against GFSI standards adds an additional layer of complexity. With binders, filing cabinets, and spreadsheets filled with supplier data, executing vendor management against your GFSI program can be cumbersome and time-consuming.

To overcome these challenges, leading manufacturers are turning to food safety technology that streamlines vendor management. Digital solutions centralize supplier records, automate approval workflows, and provide real-time tracking of compliance documentation, ensuring no critical steps are overlooked.

Example: Westrock Coffee improved supplier compliance and audit readiness using SafetyChain’s vendor management tools. By eliminating manual processes, they were able to achieve a more transparent, efficient, and scalable compliance program.

Ultimately, pursuing GFSI certification will bring more regulatory, third-party, and customer requirements under your company’s purview. Balancing these obligations while maintaining your existing operations can seem daunting, especially when working with limited resources. However, the right food safety technology can turn compliance from a daily burden into a driver of operational excellence and strategic growth.

With solutions like SafetyChain Software, your teams can streamline documentation, automate activity scheduling, and enhance vendor management, all while ensuring audit readiness and driving continuous improvement. By consolidating your food safety and quality assurance programs into a single, user-friendly platform, SafetyChain helps your team stay ahead of evolving GFSI requirements without adding administrative overhead.

Is your business struggling with any of these GFSI challenges? Don't let scattered documentation derail your certification. Schedule a demo to see how SafetyChain helped Westrock Coffee and other customers digitize their compliance efforts, turning weeks of audit prep into just a few clicks.