Hello Everyone,
I would like to introduce myself. My name is Erick Gonzalez. I'm 30 years old, like skiing, sailing, football and baseball. I work for one of the family companies, which is called Petsport USA. Our office is out in the "east bay" of the SF bay area. Over the last 18 years of our existence we've specialized in pet toys. At first we manufactured them ourselves here in the US, but as the business grew we had to expand manufacturing operations overseas to meet demand. So essentially all we do here in the US is front office stuff like designing, accounting, sales, quality control and testing.
We have a major retailer that buys our toys that has now requested that we make a peanut butter pet treat for them. They know that we will be subcontracting this work out, and so now my job is to find said subcontractor. They have certain food safety certifications that any subcontractor we hire will have to meet. researching these various acronyms -BRC SQF,FSSC22000- is how I arrived at the IFSQN website.
I've been researching the subject of food safety and the organizations related to the topic for about 3 months now. Aside from that I am an admitted neophyte in food safety standards, schemes and certification agencies. I do know a thing or two about toy safety and testing standards though, and now I have to expand this knowledge to include food safety.
I will be using the IFSQN to soak up all the knowledge I can get on food safety and the players involved. If I could find a sub for this project through this network, then I would be even more grateful for having this awesome site as a resource.