Masanori Kotani, President

Japan Food Safety Management Association (JFSM), now in its seventh year since its establishment in January 2016, has been building and operating food safety management standards "JFS," the JFS-C certification program and the JFS conformity assessment program, consistent with global standards for food safety. Our goal is to build a common foundation for food safety in the food industry. We provide food safety management standards that are easy to implement regardless of the size of the companies; even small and medium-sized business operators, which account for the most of the food industry in Japan, can ensure food safety. We also have a role in developing food safety management experts who can play an active role in food business, auditing, or certification businesses, and participate in the rulemaking of global food safety standard. Our mission is to contribute to promoting the food safety management practices in food industry not only in Japan but also in Asian countries.

In the beginning of 2000, various food-related incidents, accidents, and scandals occurred globally resulting in severe damage and difficulty to continue to the businesses concerned. It is the responsibility of food business operators (FBOs) to ensure food safety. Therefore, more and more FBOs are adopting HACCP and management systems to ensure food safety. In 2020, Codex Alimentarius revised the General Principle of Food Hygiene (GPFH) in which hygiene management based on HACCP has been strengthened and finetuned for all the FBOs to follow. On top of that, GFSI also revised the Benchmarking Requirements to raise the bar of the global standard of food safety management system. With the progress of economic partnership agreements among countries of Asia and the Pacific Rim, acquiring third-party certification on food safety management as a passport for food trading, has become an indispensable requirement for healthy continuation and growth of food businesses.

JFS standards are all based on the HACCP defined by Codex, and the flagship standard, JFS-C, has been recognized by GFSI as consistent with the latest Benchmarking Requirements. For FBOs who aim to acquire these standards, JFS guideline documents are useful tool to understand and implement the requirements easily because they provide interpretation of requirements with case studies. Furthermore, JFS standards flexibly accept any control solution versus food safety risks as far as the approach has been scientifically verified. This feature should allow small and medium-sized business operators to reduce the economic burden of acquiring the standards by minimizing the investment for facilities and machines. JFSM will continue its efforts to raise the food safety level of the entire industry so that the most of small and medium-sized business operators can promote their food safety management to strengthen their business governance.