Verified Sustainable Rice Available in Supermarkets Soon

COLOGNE, Germany, Oct. 7, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- GLOBALG.A.P. is happy to announce its partnership with the Sustainable Rice Platform (SRP), launching at ANUGA 2019 in Cologne, Germany. The launch will take place at 10:30 a.m. on 7 October at the BVLH-Retail Forum, Center Boulevard 48, Cologne Trade Fair.

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."

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.

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.

- Picture is available at AP Images (http://www.apimages.com) -

For more information on GLOBALG.A.P. visit www.globalgap.org.

GLOBALG.A.P. c/o FoodPLUS GmbH
Claudia Meifert
Public Relations
T: +49-(0)-221-57776-997
meifert@globalgap.org

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https://www.globalgap.org

SOURCE GLOBALG.A.P. Foodplus GMBH