AIB International has launched the Pandemic Prepared Certification. This is the first certification standard created for the food and beverage supply chain that elevates critical planning for people, facilities and production inputs and delivers significant social impacts, builds bottom line resiliency, and unlocks insurance benefits.
“We developed the Pandemic Prepared Certification because the food and beverage supply chain were ill-prepared for a global pandemic and the associated disruption it created in nearly every aspect of business operations world-wide,” said Steve Robert, Global VP of Sales, Marketing and Innovation, AIB International. “The AIB International Pandemic Prepared Certification is a proactive measure to help companies across the supply chain prepare for the future with the only best-in-class protocol benchmark.”
The Pandemic Prepared Certification provides assurance for the food and beverage supply chain and consumers that companies are committed to establishing and maintaining best practices. While the Pandemic Prepared Certification requires an investment, active risk management protocols and continuous refinement to remain Certified, those operations are then recognized as bringing the highest standards of integrity to the global food and beverage supply chain. This results in not only internal and social benefits, but also business continuity, and significant bottom-line impacts due to their demonstrated commitment to decreased risk. AIB International collaborated with thought leaders from government, academia, international agencies, and the world’s most recognized brands in development of the Pandemic Prepared Certification standard. We also leveraged information from food safety agencies, including FDA, CFIA (Canada), FSANZ (Australia, New Zealand), FSA (United Kingdom), FSSAI (India) and EFSA (Europe), which was incorporated, as were recommendations from domestic agencies OSHA, FEMA and EPA regarding maintaining workforce health and safety. We then built upon this using our global industry expertise in managing, training, and inspecting food safety systems to create this standard. This prescriptive and practical certification provides the food and beverage supply chain with five distinct areas operations will need to demonstrate proficiency in to become certified to this standard:
1. Pandemic Crisis Management; 2. Supply Chain Management; 3. Intermittent Operations Planning Management; 4. Health Crisis Mitigation Measures and Management; and, 5. Pre-Requisite Program Review.