GS1 Global Traceability Standard - Compliance Audit Process
The importance of end-to-end food traceability across the food industry can not be understated, as FDA Announces Key Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) Rule to Advance Traceability of Foods, A Major Milestone in the New Era of Smarter Food Safety.
According to GS1, “a traceability gap analysis tool is critical for any Organization or sector that produces goods or provides services that must meet specific customer, regulatory and operational objectives”. The Global Traceability Checklist-Control Points and Compliance Criteria is a tool developed by GS1 for continuous improvement of traceability systems using global standards. This process-based tool helps to build compliance for mandatory traceability requirements within quality management systems and benchmarks them against global standards and other key traceability regulations.
nutriSCOPE is the ultimate environment for promoting traceability and transparency across the Food Value Chain, in line with GS1 standards. Auditing an entire organization’s processes against The GS1 Global Traceability Compliance Criteria for Food Application Standard is implemented as a fully automated workflow process between the Auditee (Organization) and the GS1 Auditor.
The compliance criteria for GS1 Global Traceability Standard (GS1 GTS) are synthesized in a checklist that contains 72 Control Points grouped in 12 sections, each section having a different traceability objective. The organization (a producer, manufacturer, handler or provider of supplies or services to the food supply chain) has to complete the following questionnaire and submit it to its governing GS1 organization.
The GS1 Global Traceability Checklist fulfils the GS1 Global Traceability Standard (GS1 GTS) if the applicant follows all Mandatory Musts (red items in the questionnaire), applicable Mandatory Conditional (green) and applicable Optional (yellow) Control Points. The results of the completed questionnaire can be seen in a graph form, a very intuitive approach for both organization and auditor.
Questionnaire Summary
Once an organization is GS1 GTS compliant, its status is updated and other organizations may see it. This is helpful when determining if all suppliers are GS1 GTS compliant, or when looking for a new supplier in nutriSCOPE. It is not enough that an organization is audited and deemed compliant with GS1 GTS, full end-to-end traceability can only be achieved if all value chain participants are compliant.
Through its comprehensive SC Digital Twin, the nutriSCOPE platform can aggregate the GS1 GTS Compliance data across organization’s deep (multi-level) Supply Chain in order to provide full visibility and evaluate the level of transparency/opacity when it comes to traceability.