At the recent GLOBALG.A.P. Board meeting on 21 November 2013, the Board members finalized and approved the revision process for Version 5 of the GLOBALG.A.P. Integrated Farm Assurance Standard (IFA).

Public consultations will commence in mid 2014. Upon completion, the final version will then be published in July 2015 and will become mandatory as of 1 January 2016. GLOBALG.A.P. will make further announcements concerning the IFA Standard revision process at the annual GLOBALG.A.P. News Conference at Fruit Logistica 2014 in Berlin. For more details, click here.

The Board also made a formal request to the Technical Committee Crops to develop proposals for criteria that would strengthen microbial contamination prevention in the new version of the IFA Standard.

Further measures approved include a move to strengthen cooperation with supply chain partners in order to develop joint approaches on Chain of Custody and traceability in the supply chain, and the establishment of a Stakeholder Committee for Sustainability of Crops. A call for participation in the new stakeholder committee will be announced in early 2014.