Typical Certification Process and the Different Generations of Standards

A certification is a process by which compliance for a certain set of standards is validated through audit and inspection (Henson & Humphrey, 2010). In this process, rules and regulations are set in written form for the initial establishment and viable operation of the standards. Then an entity decides to adopt the standards or put them into practice. After the decision has been made, the entity applies the procedures or practices in order to meet the standards. Then compliance to the implementation of the standards is assessed or verified through documented evidence. Lastly, non-compliance to the agreed standards will be penalised or given corrective actions. Following the functions listed in Table 1, a public standard can be mandatory or voluntary, and that regulation is codified into law through legislation, and then applied by a government regulatory agency to private firms through inspection and audit activities. However, non- compliance to the mandatory public standards entails a criminal or administrative offence, while non- compliance to the voluntary public standards entails penalties or corrective actions set by the certification

Chapter 3: Literature Review

25 body (Henson & Humphrey, 2010). In addition, a private institution develops a set of standards, which are legally mandated by the government as a mandatory standard (Nadvi & Wältring, 2002). Lastly, voluntary private standards are standards developed and adopted by private organisations (Fulponi, 2006; Havinga, 2008; Raymond & Bonnaud, 2014). PhilGAP follows a public voluntary certification process.

Table 1. Mix of functions associated with amalgamated standards (Henson & Humphrey, 2010).

Functions Public Mandatory Standards Public Voluntary Standards Legally- Mandated Private Standards Voluntary Private Standards

Standard setting Legislature and/ or public regulator Legislature and/ or public regulator Commercial or non-commercial private body Commercial or non-commercial private body Adoption Legislature and/

or public regulator Legislature and/ or public regulator,private firms or organisations Legislature and/ or public regulator Private firms or organisations

Implementation Private firms Private firms Private firms Private firms Conformity Assessment Official inspectorate Public/private auditor

Private auditor Private auditor

Enforcement Criminal or administrative courts Public/private certification body Criminal or administrative courts Private certification body

There are a number of quality management standards in the agri-food chain that can be categorised into

any of three types or generations, with ‘generic’ as the first, followed by ‘sector-specific’ and lastly

‘company-based’ standards (Nadvi & Wältring, 2002, p. 10). The International Organisation for Standardization (ISO), an NGO, developed a generic standard called ISO9000: Quality Management, in 1987 through the national standardisation bodies of different member countries, in consultation with extensive business groups from industrialised countries and different accredited certification bodies (Nadvi & Wältring, 2002). As a first generation or generic standard, ISO 9000 ensures that a product or service consistently meets the required standards set by the company through quality management procedures, and it applies to a wide range of industries including manufacturing, services and even in public sector processes (Nadvi & Wältring, 2002). It is one of the standards legally mandated by other public sectors as a de facto requirement in various markets (Nadvi & Wältring, 2002). Riding on the popularity of ISO 9000, the same organisation introduced ISO14000 to cover environmental management

Chapter 3: Literature Review

26 systems employed by various industries (Corbett & Kirsch, 2001). ISO standards are characterised by the documentation and implementation of quality management practices, but neither prescribe specific practices or specify directly the quality or environmental practices relevant to the creation of the product or service (Corbett & Kirsch, 2001; Fulponi, 2006). An ISO standard is used to ensure consistency of

products or services by checking the entity to “say what you do, and do what you say” (Corbett & Kirsch, 2001, p. 328).

A second generation standard has emerged in the food and agriculture sector through the development of the European Retailer Produce Working Group (EurepGAP) (Nadvi & Wältring, 2002). EurepGAP was formed to develop and harmonise the production protocols for fruit and vegetable growers in Europe in 1997 (Burrell, 2011). EurepGAP also served as a private governing body to audit the producers of fruit and vegetables (Raymond & Bonnaud, 2014). The process ensures the production of high quality and safe food that is required by consumers (Kalfagianni & Fuchs, 2012). However, the concept of EurepGAP has continued to evolve over time and extended to greater geographical boundaries in response to the fast changing and globally expanding food trade (Raymond & Bonnaud, 2014). Since its inception, it has included the protocols to upgrade food quality, environmental sustainability and social accountability (Kalfagianni & Fuchs, 2012). EurepGAP then changed its name to GlobalGAP in 2007 in order to reflect its expanding role in establishing GAP standards that are benchmarked by several international retailers, and harmonised by different government regulatory agencies (Burrell, 2011; Valk & Roest, 2009). In the GlobalGAP certification programme, the product attributes come as a checklist of documents containing the critical control points and compliance criteria (CPCC) (Kalfagianni & Fuchs, 2012). The CPCC provides a range of standards that ought to be complied with by the producers and audited by the

GlobalGAP certifying body to verify compliance. The control points are management areas for compliance and range from: (1) record-keeping; (2) internal self-assessment; (3) site history and site

management; (4) waste and pollution management; (5) workers’ health and safety welfare; (6) recycling

and re-use of resources; (7) environment and conservation; and (8) complaints and traceability (Kalfagianni & Fuchs, 2012). The CPCC is comprised of 254 questions and categorised into four

modules, namely: (1) Food Safety, (2) Environmental Sustainability, (3) Workers’ Health and (4) Animal

Welfare (Amekawa, 2009; Kalfagianni & Fuchs, 2012). Each module is divided into criteria with a

corresponding level of compliance, namely: ‘Major Must’, ‘Minor Must’ and ‘Recommendation’. In

order to obtain a GlobalGAPcertificate, at least 95% compliance is needed for ‘Minor Must’ and 100%

compliance is required for ‘Major Must’, while compliance to the ‘Recommendation’ criteria is optional

(Amekawa, 2009). The PhilGAP certification programme is harmonised from the GlobalGAP (Banzon et al., 2013a) and, as such, it has a ‘less strict’ process (Tay & Parker, 1990).

Chapter 3: Literature Review

27 A third generation of food standards has emerged from powerful transnational supermarket companies or retailers who can command company-based standards (Nadvi & Wältring, 2002). These are the company-

based or “individual firm standards”, which are communicated by the large supermarket companies or

retailers across their suppliers as a sub-brand of their own product in the label (Henson & Humphrey, 2010, p. 1632). Depending on the supply agreement, the retailers perform direct inspections and audits to

the producers’ production facilities. Compliance to these standards can be viewed as a new technology

intended for adoption. As such, it is important to understand how the term technology is defined in the literature and this is reviewed in the next section.