Gfsi's role in harmonizing food safety standards

摘要

The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) emerged in 2000 to address the need to ensure food safety in Europe. Traditionally, there have been a number of differences between the European and U.S. food retailing chains. One of the most noted differencesis that, in Europe, private-label foods have consistently grown in sales. Between 1975 and 1997, for example, the average private-label product doubled in market share in European retail outlets. In 2001, private-label brands consisted of 42% of the sales in Tesco and 34% of the sales in Safeway (Table 1). Market surveys estimated that private labels accounted for 40% of European retailer sales in 2005.