Food (safety) for thought

Bureau Veritas offers a complete range of testing, inspection, and certification services in order to ensure the safety and quality of food, from farm to fork! None of this, however, is possible without trust.

With certification programmes such as ISO 22000 and The Global Food Safety Initiative Audits, Bureau Veritas enables its clients to deliver safe, high-quality food, whilst ensuring that they are compliant across the entire supply chain. The company’s customised audits help industry players to address specific food challenges, such as demonstrating responsible sourcing practices.

As a world leader in testing, inspection, and certification the Bureau Veritas name has, for almost 200 years, been synonymous with integrity – a key component in creating trust across companies, industries, and societies.

“We are a business-to-business-to-society company, which means that our work ultimately impacts on people and society,” says Gavin Hefer, Bureau Veritas district chief executive of Southern Africa. “Through exceptional service and living our values, our work impacts positively on our clients; their customers can therefore, in turn, trust the products they are using because they are Bureau Veritas tested, inspected, and certified. In this way, we create a circle of trust.”

As an independent party, Bureau Veritas has built, and continues to build, trust between governments, companies, and people – in other words, with society as a whole.

“Trust forms the cornerstone of everything we do. Our more than 80 000 employees, in over 1 600 laboratories spanning 140 countries, are encouraged to live values that create trust. While being ambitious, they should strive to be humble, responsible, accountable, open, and inclusive – and therefore trusted,” Hefer emphasises.

Over the past 190 years, Bureau Veritas has established a proven track record of integrity, impartiality, independence, and expertise. To date, the reputation it has fostered has enabled the company to ensure safety and reliability for 400 000 clients, by helping them to access markets, facilitate trade, control costs, protect their brands, and achieve licences to operate.

“We believe that our people, our global teams, and our processes are inherently driving us towards the realisation of our quest, which at the end of the day is to protect our planet and its people for future generations,” asserts Hefer. “The only way this can be achieved is through trust.”