Method for selecting certification standards for food safety

Food safety is a global public health issue and also a crucial aspect of food security. For a food manufacturing company, food safety plays an important role in maintaining its reputation, so entrepreneurs adopt certification standard systems to safeguard consumers. However, choosing a certification standard can become a complex and conflicting process for companies' decision-makers. This study proposes a multi-attribute analysis based on the multicriteria fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (FAHP) for the selection of a certification standard for food safety. Firstly, a set of certification standards in the field of food safety was selected based on a literature review and interviews with scholars and company managers. Secondly, a quantitative-qualitative interview with decision makers of a food company was performed using the AHP method. By using the AHP method, decision makers were able to compare, in a structured way, each set of criteria and assign weights for each one, according to their perception of importance. Results indicated that the hierarchical ordering of the alternatives for the decision-makers presented similar opinions regarding the weight of each criterion. Moreover, decision makers considered the cost of certification to be the most important criteria for choosing a certification standard. This paper makes unique contributions by presenting a systematic approach for managers of an industry to successfully solve complex multiple-criteria problems, such as the choice of a certification standard for food safety, with less time-consuming efforts.