Approach

Through our operations, authorized bottlers, contract manufacturers and other third parties, we make, market, distribute and sell a wide variety of beverages and foods, serving customers and consumers in more than 200 countries and territories. Fundamental to our mission is our promise to deliver trusted brands and consumer smiles with consistent safety and high quality. Food safety is a top priority for PepsiCo. The PepsiCo Global Food Safety Policy outlines our approach to delivering on this priority.

PepsiCo's comprehensive Food Safety and Quality Management System enables us to pursue our policy objectives through an effective global framework for partnering with stakeholders and safeguarding our consumers.

Roles and responsibilities

Design and management of systems relating to food safety and quality programs are housed within the Research and Development (R&D) function. Within R&D, the Compliance team is composed of representatives from Food Safety and Quality Assurance, Scientific Affairs and Regulatory Affairs, supported with input from many other functions. Its remit is to oversee compliance with both regulation and internal standards.

The Supply Chain function is embedded in segments across the business and leads the execution of programs that make, move and sell our foods and drinks. The function’s Quality Control team leads food safety and quality execution and improvement activities within operations.

Governance

A comprehensive governance structure supports connectivity across sector and global functional stakeholders, ensuring strong food safety and quality oversight and controls are in place across our enterprise.

• All our employees, including frontline and site management, play an important role ensuring compliance with standards and policies.
• Management reviews of performance trends, escalations and priorities take place regularly at the region level and twice a year globally.
• Targeted horizon scanning task forces are established to identify and manage core issues.
• Senior executives review policy compliance, strategic priorities and mitigation of potential risks through participation in region and global Executive Product Integrity Council meetings two times each year.
• PepsiCo tracks and reviews food safety strategy and performance with its PepsiCo Risk Committee and with its Board of Directors at least annually.

These ongoing reviews and assessments help to identify key areas of intervention in our operations to drive continued product safety and quality across the entire manufacturing process. Based on these, PepsiCo has identified key food safety focal points, including allergens, microbiological risks, chemical contaminants and foreign materials. We mitigate these risks with robust systems and processes, designed in alignment with stringent internal and external food safety standards.

Food quality and safety standards

PepsiCo has established strong global quality and food safety standards. We use qualified ingredients and approved suppliers, and follow all applicable regulations issued by regulatory authorities. Our manufacturing locations have traceability systems to trace incoming materials, primary packaging and products, which enable us to quickly investigate and address any potential concerns in the marketplace.

Consumer complaints

PepsiCo maintains a comprehensive management system for tracking, reporting and remediating consumer complaints. We make channels available for consumer contact, including on-pack phone, email or website information, which directs complaints either to PepsiCo or to our third-party franchisees and other business associates as relevant. On the rare occasions when incidents occur, we strive to take quick action, conduct robust investigations, implement corrective actions and share learnings across the system.

Product development

Product development follows our technical stage-gate process to ensure that the design is rigorously vetted, products are made and sold in conformance with stringent internal standards and compliance with all applicable regulations is achieved.

Metrics framework

PepsiCo has established verification systems to monitor performance, including quality control evaluations, audits (internal and third-party) and food safety and quality programs. We evaluate product safety and quality at key points in the product lifecycle, namely design, manufacture, trade and consumption, to improve our processes, performance and culture.

Training and capability development

Capability-building solutions are delivered in support of our strategies and objectives. These tailored training sessions are available to all workers whose roles impact the safety and quality of our products, including the R&D function, plant managers, quality and food safety managers, lab personnel and frontline employees. The training is available to company-owned and third-party manufacturing site employees and is delivered through both virtual and in-person platforms.

Progress

It is our aim for PepsiCo-owned manufacturing facilities to achieve GFSI-recognized certification globally. As of the end of 2024, more than 99% of company-owned facilities achieved certification from a GFSI-recognized certification program.

We require that ingredient suppliers achieve certification to a GFSI-recognized standard, including Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) for agricultural commodities, or to demonstrate equivalence through a PepsiCo pre-approval audit scheme. We continue to work with suppliers to increase the proportion of GFSI certifications worldwide.

PepsiCo has established systems and processes to effectively manage and track food safety related regulatory inspections activities globally. In 2024, we received one U.S. FDA warning letter, for which the FDA issued a closeout letter in September 2024.

During the same period, we produced more than 90 million metric tons of beverages and convenient foods in our top markets globally, of which we recalled 750 metric tons, all voluntarily. Zero product recalls were classified as notable as defined in the SASB Processed Food standard.

In 2024, we strengthened our food safety and quality framework by deploying PepsiCo’s Food Safety and Quality Management System Handbook to supplement our pre-existing corporate standard on this matter. The handbook has been deployed across our global network, including company-owned and third-party manufacturing facilities.

We have reinforced our commitment to human centricity by carefully listening to consumer feedback and making measured improvements in the quality of our products. In 2024, we simplified our consumer feedback codes, harmonized our framework through a global consumer quality standard, instituted a health-check process and leveraged the power of digitalization to provide real-time insights. These investments have enabled a decrease in consumer complaints rates globally.

We continue to invest in new IT systems to connect ingredient and product specifications across our system, enhancing product traceability. In 2024, we also enhanced our systems to actively scan for food safety incidents including border incidents, recalls, withdrawals and other trends to identify PepsiCo supply chain risk. This enables us to proactively learn from industry intelligence and strengthen our internal food safety and quality systems and programs accordingly.

In 2024, PepsiCo’s food safety and quality trainings were delivered to employees across all sectors to build the knowledge and skills they require. Training modules were provided to both company-owned and third-parties at different levels; across these modules, training is tailored to reflect the specific requirements of our employees and their roles. In addition to targeted company and third-party employees, food safety was a specific feature in our company wide Code of Conduct training, reaching approximately 93,000 employees in 2024.

Strategic collaboration

We will continue to leverage strategic external relationships. For example:

• Auditing bodies: PepsiCo is an active participant in GFSI, AIB International and the Corporate Audit Forum. We also collaborate with GFSI-recognized certification program owners, Food Safety Certification Scheme (FSSC), British Retail Consortium (BRC-GS), the International Featured Standard (IFS) and Safe Quality Food (SQF) to help us track and trace data more effectively and efficiently.
• Trade associations: PepsiCo is an active member of many associations working on quality and food safety issues, including GS1, Consumer Brands Association, International Society of Beverage Technologists, American Beverage Association and FoodDrinkEurope.

What's next?

We continue to work with third-party manufacturers and suppliers to expand the use of GFSI-recognized certifications and to invest in intelligent food safety systems that provide objective evidence and improve our decision making. We are also increasing our focus on food safety and quality culture and engagement from executives to the front line.

We plan to continue to strengthen PepsiCo's Food Safety and Quality Management System framework, making further investments in information and communications technology, enter into strategic external collaborations and actively engage with regulators, NGOs and other bodies to enable science and risk-based regulation. Our enterprise-wide systems investments must meet future requirements by our regulators and customers for accuracy and speed.