Following several years of fruitful cooperation, the European Feed Ingredient Safety Certification Scheme (EFISC) and the COCERAL Good Trading Practice (GTP) certification scheme have decided to make a stronger use of synergies for their respective activities. COCERAL GTP and EFISC certification schemes will operate jointly, under the new name “European Feed & Food Ingredients Safety Certification” Aisbl (EFISC-GTP) as of 1st July 2017. All rights and obligations of COCERAL GTP will join the European Feed & Food Ingredient Safety Certification Aisbl of which COCERAL will become a full member, next to FEDIOL and Starch Europe.
From a technical point of view, experts of EFISC and GTP have over the last year worked intensively to approximate the GTP and EFISC schemes, building on the EFISC version 3.1, while respecting ISO 17021-1:2015, ISO/TS 22003:2013 (feed/food safety management system) and GFSI (Global Food Safety Initiative) requirements, resulting in the EFISC-GTP scheme Version 4.0. Furthermore they have also developed the GTP modules into a new sector document, including flow diagrams, generic risk assessments by product group and control measures.
This new version of the EFISC-GTP Code and the EFISC-GTP Rules of Certification in combination with the relevant sector documents cover a large portion of the supply chain, including collection, trade, transport, storage and manufacturing. It is now up for stakeholder consultation.
The version 4.0. of the EFISC-GTP certification scheme will be published in January 2018, while auditing along the new rules should start as of March 2018.
