Verified Sustainable Rice Available in Supermarkets Soon
Cologne/Germany, 7 October 2019: GLOBALG.A.P. is happy to announce its partnership
with the Sustainable Rice Platform(SRP), launching at ANUGA 2019. The launch took place on 7
October at the BVLH-Retail Forum, Center Boulevard 48, Cologne, Germany.
SRP was established in 2011 and is co-convened by
the UN Environment Programme (UN Environment) and the International Rice Research
Institute, working together with over 100 institutional members from the private sector, civil
society, as well as research and development communities to promote market transformation in the
global rice trade. Together, the SRP Standard for Sustainable Rice Cultivation and
the SRP Performance Indicators provide a widely accepted basis for sustainable procurement, while
improving the lives of rice producers and minimizing the environmental footprint of rice
production.
Starting in 2020, GLOBALG.A.P. will manage the SRP Assurance Scheme, which
allows SRP verified rice farms to be registered in the GLOBALG.A.P. database where more than
200,000 producers with GLOBALG.A.P. certification are already registered. The database provides an
interface used by many global retailers to track the food safety and sustainability status of the
primary producers from whom they source their products. These verified rice farms will be
automatically assigned a unique identification number based on the GS1 system and will thus be
synchronized with the numbering system used in the entire upstream food supply chain.
GLOBALG.A.P. has been supporting SRP since 2017
to build
a viable
assessment and assurance program based on more than 12 years of experience in implementing
the GLOBALG.A.P. integrity program across the world.
Through this collaboration, rice farmers will have access to GLOBALG.A.P.’s
network of over 160 independent certification bodies, as well as to new upcoming second party
verification bodies, bringing cost-efficient assessments to rice farmers and farmer groups around
the world.
At the ANUGA GLOBALG.A.P. booth, SRP members OLAM, Herba Bangkok S.L (Ebro Foods S.A and
Mars Food) will present rice from their respective SRP programs. These programs will soon be SRP
verified and available on supermarket shelves.
Leon Mol, Director, Product Safety & Social Compliance of Ahold-Delhaize, and Vice Chair
of the GLOBALG.A.P. Board, said, “We are happy that the SRP Standard is now available to make an
important commodity like rice more sustainable. SRP’s partnership with an experienced organization
such as GLOBALG.A.P. will ensure efficiency of assessments and will contribute to the accessibility
and credibility of the data for retailers like ourselves.”
Commenting on the partnership, GLOBALG.A.P. CEO Kristian Moeller noted, “Our mission
statement is: ‘Every generation has a right to safe food.
’ That is why we support farmers world-wide in producing safe and sustainable
rice and making it available to consumers around the world. Rice is one of the world’s most
important staple foods, and we are grateful for the trust which SRP has given us to partner with
them. Together, we will make a real difference by scaling up adoption of SRP verification and
consequently the availability of sustainable rice globally.”
Matthias Bickel, Director for Food and Agriculture at Deutsche Gesellschaft für
Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and Chair of the SRP Board, said: “SRP is delighted and proud
to have found in GLOBALG.A.P. a world-leading assurance service provider for verification. Our
long-term partnership will give consumers the opportunity to buy ‘SRP verified rice’, which will
contribute to safeguarding the environment, reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, save water, and
protect natural biodiversity. Small-scale farmers and their communities will benefit from adoption
of the SRP Standard in their pursuit of better livelihoods.”
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Please visit our booth at ANUGA, BVLH Retail Forum, Center Boulevard 48.
About the Sustainable Rice Platform
The Sustainable Rice Platform (SRP) is a multi-stakeholder platform established in December
2011. The SRP is co-convened by the UN Environment Programme (UN Environment) and the International
Rice Research Institute (IRRI) to promote resource efficiency and sustainability in trade flows,
production and consumption operations, and supply chains in the global rice sector. The SRP pursues
public policy development and voluntary market transformation initiatives to provide private,
non-profit, and public actors in the global rice sector with sustainable production standards and
outreach mechanisms that contribute to increasing the global supply of affordable rice, improved
livelihoods for rice producers, and reduced environmental impact of rice production.
www.sustainablerice.org
Contact:
Wyn Ellis, Coordinator, Sustainable Rice Platform
secretariat@sustainablerice.org
About GLOBALG.A.P.
GLOBALG.A.P. is a leading global certification program whose mission is to bring farmers and
retailers together to produce and market safe food, to protect scarce resources, and build a
sustainable future.
Contact:
GLOBALG.A.P. c/o FoodPLUS GmbH
Claudia Meifert
Public Relations
T: +49 (0) 221-57776-997
meifert@globalgap.org