Bruce Becker, Marketing and Sales Director for the SAFE Program, provided answers to some of the questions received about SAFE and the SAFE audit.

Question: What is the most common question you receive regarding the SAFE Program?

Answer: When I am out promoting the SAFE audit, I am frequently asked "Aren't all audits the same?" Sometimes I'm tempted to ask "Would you consider a Yugo and a BMW 7 series basically the same car?" The truth is that each type of audit is different; each focuses on a particular aspect of a food plant. Many are very short, perhaps 4 - 6 hours, and focus solely on the current good manufacturing practices (cGMP). Other audits are slightly longer in length, perhaps a day to a day and a half, and designed to provide "due diligences" to a user of that report. Most of these "due diligence" audits provide the user some type proprietary standard that was developed by the particular auditing firm promoting it. Then there is SAFE.


Question: So what makes SAFE different?

Answer: I like to ask potential customers "How would you like to have all the information about your supplier on your computer desktop and then be able to judge that supplier according to your own criteria?" That is what makes SAFE different. SAFE does not audit against particular requirements that ultimately can limit the information that the reader receives and can change from country to country. It provides the objective facts about a food plant's program(s), policies, and procedures; then verifies that that facility is working in accordance with those requirements.

I've found that, after I explain this point of difference between SAFE audits and other audits, most potential customers are eager to hear more about SAFE. From this point forward, I begin telling the potential customer more and more about the SAFE program. My presentation focuses on how SAFE can meet that particular company's desires in the third party auditing world.


Question: Does the governance of the SAFE program set it apart from other audits?

Answer: Yes. FPA's desire is to make SAFE the universal food standard that all can use and accept. Therefore, SAFE has gone above and beyond its membership to invite various sectors of the food industry to participate in directing the path SAFE will travel. Unlike other associations, or independent auditing groups, FPA has actively sought and attained involvement from processors, retailers, food service companies, warehouse and distribution centers, primary/secondary packagers, other trade associations and auditing companies. The SAFE team believes that diversification is critical to the ultimate success of the program.


Question: Do all SAFE customers use the SAFE audit in the same way?

Answer: How a customer utilizes the information generated by a SAFE audit is that customer's choice. SAFE provides a narrative virtual "tour" of a supplier's facility, which means that the customer can utilize the information from the SAFE Audit and measure the findings against any standards or benchmarks they wish to create. If you try to do the same with a requirements-type audit, this task becomes much more difficult. When it comes to standards, there are regional or provincial concerns, different laws in different countries, etc. If a requirement- driven audit were to be accepted around the world, it would have to have as many different standards as there are different areas where such an audit would be used and accepted.

With SAFE, the auditor collects the same information that the customer would collect if the customer had unlimited resources and an unlimited budget to perform all of its own audits. The customer simply performs a desk audit on the SAFE audit and then runs the SAFE audit through a scorecard created by . the customer! That is the beauty of the process; there is no need to change the audit's checklist from location to location. However, since we utilize local auditors, the information collected is region-specific, which allows the customer to make a risk assessment concerning that supplier.


Question: Is it up to the customer to create their own "scorecard," against which the information gathered by a SAFE audit can be measured?

Answer: If a customer is too busy to create its own scorecard, or needs assistance in doing so, SAFE can help. The staff of the SAFE program has created many different industry-specific scorecards that customers can use. These industry-specific scorecards were designed by experts to measure industry-specific scores, so that a customer can compare their suppliers to an industry norm. This added benefit in the SAFE program was requested by a retailer in our group, to help its buyers purchase from only the very best supplier.

Another tool that was created to assist purchasers/buyers within customer companies was a search engine to find new and interesting food items. If your buyer(s) want an easy tool to help them to find potential suppliers of certain ingredients or commodity items, they would simply input requirements they wish to search for into the SAFE search engine, and then let the powerful search engine filter through three years of SAFE reports to bring up a list of potential suppliers. With a click of the mouse, the customer simply requests the audit information from the supplier, once the supplier grants permission, the customer has access to that supplier's SAFE audit and they can make its own determination whether they want to do business with that particular supplier. A process that used to take months has just been reduced to a matter of hours.


Question: How can potential customers or other interested parties get more information about SAFE?

Answer: The benefits of the SAFE program are too numerous to include in a short question-and-answer document. So, if you wish to learn more about the SAFE program and get more information about this unique auditing approach, please contact Bruce Becker at 202-637-4808, or via email at bbecker@fpa-food.org. You also can visit the SAFE website at www.gma-safe.org .

The audit that global food companies created for their own use is now available to you through the SAFE program. Remember: A name brand takes a lifetime to create and only a day to damage. Will you trust your name to any other audit besides SAFE?

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