Why we want our strongest allies to be our strongest critics

Johan den Hartog
Managing Director, GMP+ International

Recognising that despite the growth of our community, we still have a world to gain in achieving Feed Safety Worldwide, over a year ago we started publishing customer cases on our website. We asked a several companies, certified for one of our many scopes, to share their experiences with the certification scheme and GMP+ International with the broader public.

Reading these testimonials, I am not only proud of the diversity of the feed safety community – from small family-owned businesses to large corporations, located all over the world – but also pleased by the many different reasons they have for being certified. Pleased, because it proves that ‘GMP+’ is more than ‘just another certification scheme’, and that companies also benefit commercially from their dedication to feed safety. And make no mistake, they are absolutely entitled to that.

Knowledge partner

GMP+ FSA ‘helps us expand globally’ and ‘helps enhance our sales abroad’, companies note in their respective testimonials. Other companies say certification acts as a ‘testimony of reliability’ and ‘proves to customers that we are honest and trustworthy’.

Furthermore, it ‘ensures the quality of our products’, while others elaborate on how it helps them improving their internal procedures: ‘Because of GMP+ FSA, our processes are more professional now’ and ‘GMP+ encourages you continuously to improve quality and food safety and to never lower your guard’. And last but not least, feed companies view GMP+ International as ‘a knowledge partner that keeps us up to date’.

Improvements

I happily refer companies not yet certified, or companies sceptical about joining, to these articles on our website. But critical observers may point out, don’t certified companies have anything critical to say about us? Well, you bet! Our scheme has always been the product of the feed sector itself, so we take pride in heavily involving community members in the content of the scheme. Multiple expert committees advise us regularly about improvements, updates and possible new additions. And I can tell you first-hand, they certainly don’t hold back any criticisms they have.

As satisfied as most of our community members may be – and customer surveys confirm they are – we always realise more work needs to be done. That’s why we want our strongest allies to be our strongest critics, too. Only by working together with our community we believe we can have the best and most practical scheme. Not just for certified companies, but also for those who are willing to join us in the near future.