Global regulatory compliance

There are literally hundreds of regulatory rules, guidelines and laws in the U.S. and EU – and thousands more, if you want to distribute your product globally.

How valuable is your time

Imagine searching for a specific regulation. Start in your library, you probably have access to at least 90,000 books – but where do you begin? You could waste hours or even days trying to locate the rules that apply to your products. This is not an unrealistic scenario for manufacturers in the food and beverage industry, this is part of their daily work.

Innovative solution

The information that you need is at your fingertips – achieve complete compliance with the digitized, simple-search options that Compliance Guide, gComply and Horizon Scan can provide for your business.

Different countries, different laws

The driving force behind a productive company is the wellbeing, health and happiness of their customers. International businesses that supply products to multiple countries will inevitably have a diverse consumer base – which means that they will be subject to many different regulatory standards.

Laws change and are subject to constant updates and revisions, so compliance management can be a mammoth task. Databases like gComply and Horizon Scan, along with Compliance Guide, can make doing business internationally and complying with local laws and regulations an effortless process.

In the food and beverage industry, compliance is usually defined as the fulfillment of legal obligations. But compliance often includes the voluntary implementation of meticulous recipe-based information and processes. Compliance ensures that products that are brought to market meet country-specific regulatory specifications and correspond to applicable legislation. Especially in an era when people are increasingly vulnerable to allergies and intolerances, it has become imperative to put accurate labels on product packaging. The Compliance Guide helps manufacturers ensure that consumers have the knowledge and information they need to select the best possible products.

Market challenges for manufacturers

To achieve excellent market position and perform effective best practices in the food and beverage industry, you must constantly conform to everchanging Compliance Guide standards. Rules and regulations have existed in this respect in Europe since 2014 to simplify enterprise product data management. Developed by the European Food Safety Authority, the European Food Information Regulation (LMIV) 1196/2011 requires manufacturers to give consumers access to all relevant product information when purchasing food and beverages. Europe-wide product labeling standards are essential elements for better product quality.

In addition, the LMIV stipulates certain guidelines pertaining to the size and positioning of the font on packaging, printing allergens in bold-faced type and including mandatory nutritional value information. Information pertaining to the origin of meat products and the use of substitutes must also be listed on the labels.

For many manufacturers, compliance and labeling can be a serious and costly challenge. Fueled by the demands of EU institutions and consumer affairs agencies, legal regulations are subject to constant change. These updates and new requirements must be implemented quickly. To keep abreast of these changes, it is not an efficient use of time and manpower for food engineers and manufacturers to simply depend on their independent capacity to research, making the support of systems like gComply, Horizon Scan and Compliance Guide essential.

China has recently emerged as one of the most important consumer markets in the world for the food and beverage industry – along with the rising standard of living, the consumer patterns of China’s residents have become more demanding and health-conscious, placing immediate demands on the Chinese government to strengthen food regulations and ensure food safety.

In 2015, the “Food Safety Law of the People’s Republic of China” (FSL) was enacted; it is one of the strictest regulations in the world. For manufacturers supplying goods to this country, this means guaranteeing even more stringent production methods – making the Compliance Guide imperative for companies and manufacturers that want to sell in this market and provide the most up to date data.

On the safe side with Compliance Guide

As an integrated compliance management system, Compliance Guide matches product formulas with worldwide regulatory requirements, incorporating traffic light labeling for food products. Various product recipes can easily be compared, analyzed or seamlessly added to another recipe. This innovative solution provides a simple, transparent additive list so that manufacturers can quickly determine which substances are allowed in which countries and in what amounts – across the globe.

The Compliance Guide is exactly like having a massive library – at your fingertips. It allows companies to access more than 90,000 regulations from 212 countries. This provides the basis for manufacturers to verify compliance with current, real-time regulations around the world. The Compliance Guide uses more than five million key words and terms in 40 different languages.

There is simply no way that a food engineer or food and beverage manufacturer could keep up – much less sustain strategic growth – with their competition. Rising consumer demands and the push for faster product development leads to growing data volume. Manually processing such large amounts of data costs not only time and money – but also allows far more errors. Businesses and organizations that opt to use Compliance Guide have a clear advantage over their competition.

Individual storage of data, documents and consumer protection standards

Simplification is the key when it comes to working with Compliance Guide. It solves the problem of complex global regulations and provides manufacturers with an easy-to-use Compliance Management Dashboard. All product data can be processed effectively, efficiently, and kept up-to-date – and compliant. This makes further product development significantly easier, enabled by the system’s “What would be when” analysis, which preemptively runs possible scenarios related to manufacturing, launch and consumer feedback of a product to prevent possible financial losses.

Compliance Guide applications are particularly compatible with databases and regulatory libraries like Horizon Scan or gComply, which make key output documents available and enable manufacturers to deliver a stellar final product.

Innovative compliance solutions that are specialized for data collection, offer the food and beverage industry significant advantages. Working with Big Data guarantees the inclusion of automatic oversight, transparency and traceability of global standards, allowing companies comprehensive insight into the worldwide regulatory framework and facilitating compliance. This accelerates product launch and time to market, as well as securing market position – which virtually guarantees increased ROI and revenue.

Increase your profit with Horizon Scan and gComply

Real time, up to date, current information – that is what you can achieve with Horizon Scan. A comprehensive database, this system monitors global trending topics that affect the integrity of all food products. It allows manufacturers to ensure consumer safety as well as protect their own brand identity. Horizon Scan also enables the tracking of other manufacturers and their supply chains, letting companies align their partnerships according to how they comply with regulations. A daily Horizon Scan update guarantees long-term up-to-date accessibility of all data.

gComply is also fully compatible with Compliance Guide, because the Compliance Guide directly links to gComply data. gComply makes all necessary data available for determining the compliance status of all products, materials, components and ingredients. In terms of global knowledge and acting as a regulatory library, this system works similarly to Horizon Scan. gComply scans all current standards – from all countries, making these available to manufacturers whenever they are needed.

Becoming and remaining compliant is the golden rule for any producer in the food and beverage industry who wants to be a reliable partner with both clients and consumers. The best way to fulfill this mission is with Compliance Guide, gComply and Horizon Scan.

 

Featured Image: © fotolia / ankabala

2019-07-10T14:12:41+02:00Compliance|
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