Quality Policy Principles: Coherence

Benefits

  • Policy and associated interventions are purposefully aimed at achieving the desired outcomes of many similar local, regional and international requirements, which removes unnecessary levels of subsequent evaluation and minimizes duplication of effort required to demonstrate compliance, leading to less effort and cost for this activity by local and regional producers and suppliers. This could also be the difference in making their produce or products competitive in other markets.
  • The alignment of the requirements of different national regulators under a common framework for policy creation, maintenance and surveillance makes the compliance-related activities much more predictable and easier to understand. This leads to less effort and cost on the part of producers and suppliers, which should also have a positive effect on the cost of the items they produce or supply, as well as increased motivation for them to work proactively to demonstrate voluntary compliance.
  • Allowing the utilization of the results of CA activities to address multiple CA needs, e.g. results to be used for more than one purpose and/or test so that additional results are only required to address gaps in data and information, enables current CA service providers to provide a much more cost-effective service and potentially encourages them to expand their scope of work into areas that have previously not been covered.