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| | | | Sainsbury's signs up to Bodycote Lawlabs' Valid-It | | | | | | 7 June 2007
Sainsbury’s has now signed up to Valid-IT, the programme developed by Bodycote Law Labs that validates the source of various materials.
Valid-IT is already in use by Tesco, Waitrose and ASDA to validate the supply of specific controlled spices and non-GM ingredients, but the system can be extended to other foods, such as nuts, and other allergenic products where traceability is becoming increasingly important. Sainsbury’s will be using Valid-IT initially to validate non-GM ingredients.
Through a desk top assessment of available documentation, Valid-IT enables retailers to ensure that the ingredient sources employed by their own label suppliers have effective quality systems with appropriate certification, as well as adequate testing, segregation and traceability in place. The Valid-IT programme is managed through a website which can be password accessed all over the world by retailers’ own label suppliers. The information on suppliers and ingredients is updated instantly and notified to users.
The Valid-IT assessment is paid for by the ingredient supplier so that they have ownership of the information which can then be used to demonstrate their status to their customers. Although Sainsbury’s has signed up to the programme, there is no additional fee to pay for their suppliers – one assessment will satisfy Tesco, ASDA, Waitrose and now Sainsbury’s.
Jon Roe, Head of Supplier Performance at Sainsbury’s said: “We are launching this initiative in conjunction with changes to our Inspire Specification Management system which has a new field to record the Valid-IT supplier code. This will significantly increase the traceability on non-GM ingredients by linking the Valid-IT programme to our specifications”.
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