Chris Kempczinski

President and CEO, McDonald’s

The Why
Food safety McDonald’s is the world’s leading global food-service company
with over 38,000 restaurants in 120 countries. More than 80% of

is our number McDonald’s restaurants worldwide are owned and operated by local
business men and women. At McDonald’s, we are proud of creating

one priority… memorable experiences by reaching customers, wherever they are,

it is something
customer favorites. Food safety is our number 1 priority. McDonald’s
recognises that food safety should not be a competitive advantage

that requires
within the food industry. We are committed to harmonising food safety
standards and sharing best practices globally. Additionally, Cindy Jiang,

all of us to
our Senior Director of Global Food Safety (Food and Packaging) has
been an active member of the GFSI Board since 2008. McDonald’s

stay focused
understands the potential benefits for the food industry to harmonise
food safety audit standards and practices at food manufacturing sites
globally. We are proactively working with the GFSI community to devel-
24/7/365. op efficient processes and tools to make “once certified, recognised
everywhere” a reality for food manufacturer plant audits. With fewer
redundant food manufacturer plant audits, plant personnel can focus
more on managing food production facilities and improving the food
safety practices, such as cleaning, sanitation, maintenance, HACCP
implementation, prevention of food fraud, etc. The GFSI Benchmarking
Requirements has served as a guide for all the recognised food safety
audit standards. It has played a significant role to reduce the number of
food safety audit standards and redundant food safety audits globally.
As a result, McDonald’s requires suppliers to be certified to any of the
GFSI-benchmarked food safety certification programmes.

The How
McDonald’s commitment to product safety and quality at our res-
taurants starts with an expectation of supplier excellence. A strong
supplier commitment to food safety and quality is important to ensure
that McDonald’s restaurants can consistently deliver safe, high-qual-
ity, great tasting products to our customers every day. additional McDonald’s specific requirements. An output
Our Supplier Quality Management System (SQMS) is an of this exercise is an auditable addendum checklist.
expectation document which outlines the McDonald’s Suppliers simply have to add on the addendum to
requirements with respect to suppliers’ food safety and their GFSI audit to be fully compliant with McDonald’s
quality management systems. Subsequently, supplier expectations. Engaging auditing firms and other
compliance to SQMS requirements are verified through stakeholders in the process means that mapping tools
audits by recognised 3rd party audit firms. McDonald’s and audit reports are practical in nature. Finally, an
approach to supplier expectation management is to update to the auditing standards by CPOs, may trigger
identify gaps between SQMS and the GFSI benchmark a review and revision to our addendum. The success
certification programmes, such as BRC, IFS, SQF, FSSC of keeping these documents current is the on-going
22000 and GlobalGAP etc. Collaboration between the relationships we have with suppliers, CPOs and audit-
GFSI benchmarked Certification Programme Owners ing firms. Collaboration is key for all stakeholders to
(CPOs), suppliers and certification bodies (CBs) allows continue the journey with us to ensure that high quality
us to map these gaps and subsequently identify the of food safety audits remain meaningful.

The Benefits
Having consolidated a number of food safety auditing chain. At McDonald’s, we have seen overall improve-
standards and programmes for the food industry ment on food safety practices at food manufacturer
globally helps the food industry to reduce redundant level globally while reducing the number of redundant
audits and allocate more resources on improving food audits by multiple parties/customers. However, there
safety practices. Many people were questioning how are issues with auditor performances from time to
GFSI would make it work in terms of reducing the time — on occasion, we’ve had experiences where a
number of food safety standards in early 2000, and food plant received high audit scores that our internal
now people can see the results. With collective efforts staff would not agree with. This is an opportunity to
from the food manufacturers, food service companies, train and calibrate with auditors and also have food
and food retailers, we have made huge progress on production facility to maintaining strong food safety
reducing the number of food safety audit standards culture and deliver high performance every day.
and elevating food safety practices along the supply

Figures
Collaboration is key to the success of using GFSI- with auditor consistency, we should follow the established
benchmarked food safety audits. All stakeholders must be processes to inform CB/auditing firms so that they can
engaged and committed. This is a journey, and it takes time address the issue. Let’s continue to work to make the GFSI
to achieve better results. When people experience issues food safety certification programme better together!

Collaborate with suppliers, auditing firms to strengthen the quality of food safety verification