FAQs Questions List
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
–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?
–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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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?