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SSQA                             

Safety, Security and Quality Assurance Program (FAQs)                                          

Are you warming up to the SSQA program yet? If not, you are invited to check out some of the questions which have been asked about the program. These are listed with answers below. You may have some questions as well. We like to know what they are and we will try to answer them. Please feel free to forward any questions that you have to: gcse@afisservices.com

 

Frequently asked questions:

 

–What is the GCSE-Food & Health Protection SSQA program?

–What type of organization is GCSE- Food & Health Protection?

–Who can participate in the SSQA program?

–Does the SSQA program have a certification process?

–Does the SSQA program replace existing product safety and quality assurance programs for an operation?

–Is this program going to give us some impetus and the means to persuade the myriad of companies…?

–What is the cost of implementing the SSQA Program?

-Who monitors the SSQA Program?

-What makes the SSQA conference different from other conferences?

-How is product failure liability dealt with under the SSQA model?

-What audit standard must a company meet under the SSQA program?

Q1: What is the GCSE-Food & Health Protection SSQA program?

A: This is a program implemented by operators who recognize the importance of collaboration and ensure that such collaboration occurs through the entire chain of production, supply, processing, distribution and consumption. SSQA is implemented with guidance and training support from GCSE-Food & Health Protection.

 

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Q2: What type of organization is GCSE- Food & Health Protection?

A: As the name indicates, the Global Coalition for Sustained Excellence in Food & Health Protection (GCSE-FHP) is a worldwide member driven and member led coalition that encourages members and the industry at large to maintain excellence in protecting the consumers of food and health products. Additional information is provided here: http://www.afisservices.com/gcse-fhp/gcseindex1.html

 

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Q3: Who can participate in the SSQA program?

A: Any food and health product company or industry professional working at any point in the chain of production, supply, processing, distribution and sale may participate in the program.

 

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Q4: Does the SSQA program have a certification process?

A: There is no certification process. The SSQA program is designed to ensure a first-hand reality-based recognition. A participating operation gains credibility, recognition and trust through the results of the implemented programs that are actually seen and experienced by the stakeholders. On the other hand, these stakeholders do not rely on outside parties to advise them on the reliability of implemented programs. They are direct and collaborative contributors and participants. Therefore, they have both first-hand and experiential knowledge about the reliability. In short, the stakeholders will already know the validity, relevance and dependability of the implemented programs more than an outside observer or assessor. Therefore, while a certification program provided by an outside party may be useful during the program initiation stages at the entry levels, the need for such outside certification programs diminishes or is eliminated altogether for operations that are fully established in the SSQA program. This leads to a reduction in the cost of maintaining certification. The associated administration costs are also reduced for these operations.

 

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Q5: Does the SSQA program replace existing product safety and quality assurance programs for an operation?

A: The SSQA program is able to stand alone but it is not intended to replace the product safety, security and quality assurance programs that are already implemented by the enlisted participants. The SSQA program strengthens these programs.

 

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Q6: Is this program going to give us some impetus and the means to persuade the myriad of companies who insist on writing their own standards that compliance to an internationally recognized standard should be sufficient? They may have one or two specific requirements they would like companies to meet on top of the standard - but not rewrite the whole thing?

A: The SSQA program is designed to provide a convincing model that satisfies the requirements of clients, customers or  companies. SSQA is reality-based.The assessment metrics are essentially the same that these companies are already using in making their decisions about accepting products and services. The aim and determination of GCSE-Food & Health Protection is to make it sufficient for you to say to a client, customer or regulator  that your programs are based on the SSQA model. In fact, these stakeholders will already be directly involved in the program with you and they will have first-hand knowledge of the dependability. Therefore, you will not need to convince them. The SSQA program is designed to make dependence on second-hand outside opinion about the effectiveness of a supplier's product safety and quality programs a thing of the past.

 

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Q7: What is the cost of implementing the SSQA Program?

A: Payments to GCSE-Food & Health Protection for participating in the SSQA program are very minimal. It is possible for the total cost to be less than $500 CAD for life. Keep in mind that the SSQA program is designed to minimize costs to companies in the first place. A participating company is completely free to decide on how much it is willing to spend. This largely depends on its ability to maximize the returns on investments while achieving effective, efficient and reliable consumer protection. There are no fixed amounts that participating companies must pay annually in order to maintain the SSQA programs. All fees applicable to the SSQA programs outside of the fees paid for enlisting are completely voluntary. For example, the current fee is set at $150 CAD for companies, and $75 CAD for SSQA Facilitators per year to access the program guide that is available on-line. This fee is only required for enlisting in the program. Payments for other provisions available to SSQA program participants are completely voluntary. For example, a participant may decide to pay the fee for only a single period of access to the implementation guide. The access is typically for one year. This could be the only payment that is made outside of the company’s usual internal costs for implementing and managing the programs. Other fees that apply to membership participation in GCSE-Food and Health Protection are also completely voluntary. These include contributions that allow for on-going SSQA programs implementation assistance or guidance from GCSE-FHP Panellists. Certain contributions for membership administration are also voluntary. Membership in the coalition is free.

 

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Q8: Who monitors the SSQA Program?

A:There is no requirement in the SSQA program to have an official outside monitoring body that assesses the effectiveness of the SSQA program. This eliminates the added (unnecessary) costs of managing such a monitoring system. The SSQA program is based on a system of facts and trust. As such self-monitoring among the participants is both encouraged and considered to be sufficient. This by no means implies that the SSQA program has less stringent and rigorous monitoring system. Participating companies are fully subject under the applicable regulations and, where necessary, undergo regulatory inspections. Regulatory compliance is taken very seriously under the SSQA program. Although regulatory inspections do not directly assess the effectiveness of the program, what they assess verifies its usefulness and effectiveness. The SSQA program also eliminates the redundancies and reduces the costs of outside monitoring by capitalizing on the current system of third party assessments. Where participants are already engaged in such assessments, the effectiveness of the SSQA program is considered to be sufficiently verified. The true validity and effectiveness of the SSQA program is of course reality-based and demonstrated by what customers and consumers are actually getting in terms of safe and satisfactory products or services.

 

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Q9: What makes the SSQA conference different from other conferences?

A: The SSQA conference is a unique conference for the food & health industry operators, professionals and other stakeholders.

What the conference is not:

It is NOT bringing people together to present different high-sounding but confusing ways of doing the same old things with recurring failures.

The aim of this conference is NOT to provide lots of hypothetical and great-sounding but useless and impractical information that will be discarded once participants arrive back at their home base. This conference is NOT to merely impress you with theoretical presentations and confusing information overload.

It is NOT a conference for presenting elaborate and cost intensive schemes which can only be undertaken by a small number of big companies that can afford to fail while experimenting with such schemes. This is NOT simply another conferences that merely presents big ideas which quickly fade away as conference participants face the realities of having no funds and not knowing who, where or how to start implementing the big ideas in their operations.

It is NOT one of those “no follow-up” conferences where everything ends at the close of the conference and you are left to figure out your way through the maze of competitors’ take home flyers.

What the conference is:

The GCSE-SSQA conference introduces a radical new way of doing things with a focus on practical every day realities for small to large operations.

Conference participants will have the opportunity to enlist and receive a program initiation guide that will allow them to immediately but voluntarily engage in the SSQA program.

Enlisted participants will have access to on-going assistance well after the conference. This assistance is readily available but without compulsion. To the degree that they wish, enlisted participants will be actively engaged and they will receive post conference help with their product safety and quality assurance programs.

Enlisted participants will also have access to guidance that will help them to incrementally implement cost reduction and labor-saving strategies while increasing the effectiveness of their customized measures for product safety and quality assurance.

 

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Q10: How is product failure liability dealt with under the SSQA model?

A: The SSQA model properly balances collaboration and liability. While chain-wide collaboration is the key concept of the SSQA model, liability for failure is not automatically chain-wide. In full collaboration with the entire chain, each supplier (or origin) of a product is primarily responsible to ensure product safety and quality. Consequently, each supplier (or origin) of a product is liable for any failure. The flow of responsibility and liability typically follows the chain of custody. Depending on where failure is indisputably determined to have occurred, the flow could be represented thus:

1. Outbound transfer of responsibility and liability from supplier -> wholesaler/importer -> retailer/point of sale -> regulator/external certifier -> consumer

2. Inbound transfer of responsibility and liability from consumer -> regulator/external certifier -> retailer/point of sale -> wholesaler/importer -> supplier

 

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Q11: What audit standard must a company meet under the SSQA program?

A: The SSQA program, or more appropriately concept does not require a company to meet any specific “audit standard”. What many in the industry typically refer to as audit standards are actually audit schemes. The SSQA concept has its suggested scheme based on science and industry experience. A unique approach to auditing is provided under the SSQA program. Audits are focused, exciting and effective with specialized and properly directed categories of audits that include: overview and specialized audits. Detailed descriptions of the different audit categories are provided in the implementation guide that is available to members of GCSE-Food & Health Protection who have enlisted in the SSQA program.

For additional information you may read: The Internal Assessment Programs Blog Post

 

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Q12: How does a company or an individual enlist as a participant in the GCSE-FHP SSQA program?

A: The Anyone wishing to enrol in the program should start with these steps:

 - Register as member of GCSE-Food & Health Protection: Registration;

 - Contact the GCSE-FHP Team to express your interest and for help through the process;

 - Provide details about whether you wish to enrol as a company or an individual facilitator;

 - If as a company, provide details of your type of business, if an individual provide details of your       

   qualifications and industry knowledge;

 - Obtain the online SSQA Manual for a self study (if a company, the facilitator or manager does the self

   study)

 - Submit the registration fee/donation equivalent to the amount for posting as outlined in the membership

   manual;

 - Complete at least the basic training on SSQA offered by GCSE-FHP by one of the accredited trainers or

   at one of the GCSE-FHP conferences;

 - Proceed with SSQA implementation according to the manual guidelines;

 - Maintain status as a member of GCSE-FHP and as an enlisted participation according to the

   membership stipulations and the SSQA enrolment stipulations;

 Other details are available in the manual. 

 

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Q13: Is the SSQA Implementation Manual ready and available for purchase?

A: Unfortunately, the manual is not quite ready. The technical review must be completed before the roll out. However, for asking, you and anyone else with this question automatically qualify for a deal: Between now and the end of February to early March that the roll out is set to begin, if you register to purchase a copy, a 30% discount automatically applies for you. There is no limit to how many can register for this discount but the deadline is March 1, 2014. If you wish to take advantage of this offer please contact the GCSE-FHP Team directly via email: gcse@afisservices.com

The current pricing information is provided in this post: Merits of a Manual – What Distinguishes the SSQA Manual?

 

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