Defending the food chain

Created in response to the complicated nature of the global food industry and the mass of national regulations and standards that sprang up to try and police it, ISO 22000 has now been adopted by organizations from numerous food industry sectors across the globe. It provides a global management system framework for certification that crosses borders as easily as the produce whose safety it strives to ensure, while widening the scope of food safety management to support industries and smaller organizations that might not have had the resources or motivation to seek certification in the past.

As an evolution of other standards, ISO 22000:2005 Food safety management systems. Requirements for any organization in the food chain uses generally recognised methods of food safety management such as interactive communication across the food chain, system management, control of hazards through prerequisite programmes and HACCP plans, and continual improvement and updating of the management system.

In July 2006, a survey of 44 national standards bodies, found that only five countries had yet to adopt ISO 22000 as a national standard. Of these, Canada was waiting to assess the feedback of a wide group of stakeholders due to report back that same month before making a decision to go ahead, while the rest - Japan, Qatar, Senegal and Trinidad & Tobago - were yet to make a decision on adoption. Half of the countries surveyed said they expected to have begun certifying early adopters of the standard before the end of this year.

One such early adopter of ISO 22000 as a food safety management system is confectioner Henri Charpentier, which became one of the first food companies in Japan to achieve ISO 22000 certification earlier this year. The company, famous in Japan for its "fancies" and Madeline cakes, upgraded from its existing HACCP-based food safety system to ISO 22000 as part of a general programme of improvement rather than in reaction to a particular incident or catalyst such as a customer requirement.

The firm, which used BSI Management Systems Japan to perform its audit and certification - one of the first independent certification bodies to be able to deliver ISO 22000 certification in the country - is now on a path of continuous improvement in their food safety programme. Because ISO 22000 governs food safety rather than quality, which remains very much in the hands of the producer as a key element in its business strategy, Henri Charpentier can now add food safety to its other unique selling points of great taste and design.

"We went through the assessment by BSI Japan believing that they represent our customers," says Koji Yoshida, assistant manager of Henri Charpentier's Operational Audit Office and a member of the ISO 22000 Steering Task Force. "Therefore, we welcomed any observations or comments for improvement from BSI, as those comments are easier for us to absorb and because observations by BSI Japan are more persuasive than those made by people within our company."

Compatible ingredients

While ISO 22000 has strong credentials as a stand-alone standard, it is also designed to be fully integrated with ISO 9001:2000. This means that, as well as cutting down on administration costs by minimizing overlap between the two, ISO 22000 is able to build on the familiarity earned by the popular ISO 9000 series to help food businesses expand their commitment to standards and continuous improvement in food safety.

This certainly proved to be the case with Hungarian food processor Moraprizma Szovetkezet, which was running ISO 9001 and HACCP at its plant in the Moraholm region of Hungary before deciding to become one of the first organizations in the country to register to ISO 22000.

The company, which was established to process vegetable and fruit crops in the region, produces fresh salad mix and vegetable pieces in various forms of packaging. Customers include the hospitality industry and retailers such as Tesco - the world's third largest supermarket and retail chain - and French hypermarket group Cora.

The company chose ISO 22000 because of the ease with which it consolidates ISO 9001 and HACCP, its certification formula and the fact it is an internationally recognized standard for food safety management.

International recognition also proved a vital ingredient for Hong Kong's Health Affluence Group. A subsidiary of Imperial Bird's Nest International, one of Hong Kong's leading importers of bird's nests and a wholesaler and retailer with operations in Hong Kong and Canada, Health Affluence manufactures a range of instant bird's nest soup products and has already gained ISO 22000 certification at its Yuen Long plant in Hong Kong.

Certification was attained after BSI carried out an assessment to compare Health Affluence's existing food safety management systems against ISO 22000. Following this, BSI conducted a three-day audit to verify the group's systems and controls against the standard.

A wider menu

One breakthrough for ISO 22000 is that it provides support firms - be they in the growing packaging, storage or transportation worlds - with a means to gain certification. This was one deciding factor for UK packaging firm Bemis Swansea Ltd, which achieved its ISO 22000 certification through BSI earlier this year. Bemis is one of the largest packaging companies in the Americas and Mike Bird, plant manager at its Swansea UK site, underlines the benefits he sees ISO 22000 certification will bring to his business going forward: "This significant accomplishment demonstrates our company's continued commitment to deliver products that meet customer requirements. The certification will now extend the scope of our current food safety management system by enabling us to demonstrate the result of our activities to customers, suppliers and other interested organizations worldwide."

As an addition to the portfolio of food standards already available, ISO 22000 will hopefully minimize the risk faced by the public to the infrequent yet serious contamination scandals that pose such a threat to the industry. Its take-up suggests that, when it comes to managing food safety, many companies understand the important role that ISO 22000 plays.

Source: businessstandards.com/Articles

A revolution in international food safety standards?

Safety in the food supply chain is of paramount importance. And yet there hasn't been a single, universally accepted, end-to-end food safety standards-based solution in place: until now. Oliver Cann finds out more.

Early in 2009, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US announced that it had found widespread salmonella contamination at a large peanut processing plant based in Georgia. Despite the fact that the plant itself was not a major player, its products - in particular, its peanut paste - tainted an entire supply chain.

According to the FDA, as of April 2009, more than 2,100 products in 17 categories had been recalled by more than 200 companies, and the list continues to grow. The plant at the heart of the incident has filed for bankruptcy and the salmonella outbreak itself struck more than 500 people, extending as far as Canada. Of those affected, at least six were reported to have died.

Strengthening the chain

The food supply chain on which we all rely extends farther and goes deeper than ever before. For example, a piece of fruit grown in Africa can be on grocery store shelves in Europe within 24 hours of harvest. Coffee from Asia wends its way to shops across Europe. Lamb from New Zealand is enjoyed across the UK and North America.

With such a far-reaching supply chain in place, carrying such an essential product as food, having the proper security and safety measures in place is vital.

A robust, independently verified food management system could make a real difference by improving a food organization's flexibility, readiness and ultimate viability in the face of an ever-changing risk environment. This is particularly true when set against the backdrop of current economic pressures, when there is a temptation to cut corners. Under the circumstances, the need for food safety has never been greater. And yet, to this day, there has not been a unified, internationally accepted food safety management solution in place to do the job.

Good progress has been made by the industry to date. It was concern over potential risks in the food supply chain that prompted the creation of a number of early food safety sector initiatives and standards, including HACCP and the BRC and IFS retailer driven food manufacturing standards along with EuroGAP for the pre-farm gate sector. But it was not until the publication of international food safety management system standard ISO 22000 in 2005 that there was a single standard covering the entire food supply chain.

Adoption of ISO 22000 throughout all sectors of the industry has been relatively poor. In particular, in the highly influential food manufacturing sector, it quickly became apparent that ISO 22000 had limitations. From a technical perspective, the requirements on prerequisite programmes (PRPs) were not deemed to be specific enough to meet stakeholder needs.

Another limitation revolved around the position of the internationally recognized organization, the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI). Without the appropriate PRPs and scheme ownership, ISO 22000 could not be benchmarked by the GFSI and given the same approval as other standards.

"The food safety landscape is very straight-forward," says Steve Mould, worldwide quality management systems manager at Kraft Foods. "Food safety standards need to be recognized by the GFSI but ISO 22000 could not on its own. ISO 22000 gives lists of PRP topics to consider, but because it covers the whole of the food industry, it does not include PRPs for each step: otherwise it would need to be the size of an encyclopaedia. Something else was needed to fill the gap and give ISO 22000 the support that was needed."


PAS 220: supporting ISO 22000


Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 220 is a new complementary standard to ISO 22000. It has been designed to address the technical limitations around PRPs in ISO 22000 for the food manufacturing sector.

PAS 220:2008 Prerequisite programmes on food safety for food manufacturing was developed by BSI and sponsored by Danone, Kraft Foods, Nestlé and Unilever through the Confederation of the Food and Drink Industries of the EU (CIAA). Other stakeholders involved in the development process included representatives from the Food and Drink Federation (FDF), McDonald's, General Mills Europe, and certification bodies.


FSSC 22000: the icing on the cake


FSSC 22000 (Food Safety System Certification 22000) is a new global food safety scheme which brings together ISO 22000 and PAS 220 certification for the food manufacturing industry.

"While existing schemes have a reasonable consistency of requirements, there was no true consistency of auditing and certification," says Mould, who was also the technical author of PAS 220. "Food safety schemes on the market today tend to be owned by stakeholders in the food supply chain. By moving to an independently owned certification scheme, we saw that we would be able to minimize system and audit variations based on geography, sector and customer, and reduce barriers to trade across the chain."

"An independent board comprising representatives from manufacturing, retail, consumer organizations and other international bodies is responsible for the content and management of FSSC 22000," says Cor Groenveld, chairman of the Foundation for Food Safety (FFS), the not-for-profit organization responsible for the scheme. "The scheme's independent ownership should make it attractive to all stakeholders."

The scheme has been designed to meet the GFSI's benchmarking requirements and a decision by the GFSI board will take place in May 2009 as to whether FSSC 22000 is accepted as an approved certification scheme.

Once the GFSI approves FSSC 22000, Paul Whitehouse, quality manager at Unilever and another member of the PAS 220 steering group, believes one impact on the food manufacturing industry could be cost savings and new opportunities for SMEs and niche producers.

"Food safety is a destination; there are a number of routes and you choose one that best suits your organization," he says. "Given that companies are already used to working with ISO standards and are familiar with the risk and management systems based approach adopted by ISO 22000 and PAS 220, they may find it easier to align with these than with other standards."

"A GFSI-approved FSSC 22000 scheme could bring more food manufacturers into the fold, as well as encouraging other interested parties along the food chain to adopt similar PRP-based approaches," says Joy Franks, the global product manager at BSI responsible for food safety.

"The majority of the ISO 22000 certificates that have been issued to date come from outside the manufacturing sector," she says. "The driver was never there for manufacturers because of the PRP issues that are so central to their requirements. This has been addressed by ISO 22000 and PAS 220 and it's quite conceivable that, in a similar way, ISO 22000 plus new PAS 220 type standards could be used as a framework for other food sectors, for example retail, foodservice and packaging. If this was to become the case, then we'd have a more integrated approach to food safety management, which would be a great step forward for the industry and, ultimately, the consumer."

With seven of the world's largest supermarket chains already committed to accepting any scheme recognized by the GFSI, there is widespread optimism that FSSC 22000 will join the GFSI recognized list, says Groenveld: "The development of the scheme and PAS 220 has been a positive process, with international and broad industry input. Now we are just waiting for the GFSI approval and then we will hopefully see a significant impact in the industry."

"We are heading towards a truly international food safety standard, one that covers the whole of the supply chain," says Mould. "This will make the supply chain safer. If every aspect of the food industry adopted one international standard and operated under the same management system structure, then we will have more consistency and enhanced safety throughout the supply chain. With ISO 22000 and PAS 220 coming together under FSSC 22000, we're in a position for this to happen and we may well see a revolution in the food industry."

Source: businessstandards.com/Articles

Benefit of ISO 22000

Introduction

In order to understand the significance of ISO 22000 e must first understand what ISO 22000 is about and how is it applicable to the food industry. To achieve these objectives we must ask the following questions:

What ISO 22000 means?

ISO 22000 means consensus agreements between all the economic stakeholders concerned: suppliers; users; government regulators; other interest groups, such as consumers

How ISO 22000 benefit society?

For businesses, the widespread adoption of ISO 22000 means that suppliers can base the development of their products and services on specifications that have wide acceptance in their sectors;

This, in turn, means that businesses using ISO 22000 are increasingly free to compete on many more markets around the world

How ISO 22000 benefit consumers?

For consumers:

1. Conformity of products and services to International Standards

2. Provides assurance about:

:: quality

:: safety

:: reliability

How ISO 22000 benefit trade officials?

For trade officials negotiating the emergence of regional and global markets, IS0 22000 create “a level playing field” for all competitors on those markets;

The existence of divergent national or regional standards can create technical barriers to trade, even when there is political agreement to do away with restrictive import quotas and the like;

International Standards are the technical means by which political trade agreements can be put into practice

How ISO 22000 benefit developing countries?

For developing countries, ISO 22000 represents an international consensus and constitute an important source of technological know-how;

By defining the characteristics that products and services will be expected to meet on export markets;

International Standards give developing countries a basis for making the right decisions when investing their scarce resources and thus avoid squandering them

How ISO 22000 benefits everyone?

ISO 22000 can contribute to the quality of life in general by:

-ensuring safe food

-reducing foodborne diseases

-better quality and safer jobs in the food industry

-better utilization of resources

-more efficient validation and documentation of

techniques, methods and procedures

-increased profits

-increased potential for economic growth and development

How ISO 22000 benefit governments?

For governments, ISO 22000 provides:

-technological and scientific know-how

-bases for developing health, safety and environmental legislation

-education of food regulatory personnel

How ISO 22000 benefit governments?

-certification or registration

-international acceptance of standards used globally

-economic benefits

-social benefits

-trade liberalization

-food quality

-food safety

-food security

What are the benefits of ISO 22000 for other stakeholders?

Confidence that organizations implementing ISO 22000 have the ability to identify and control food safety hazards;

International in scope;

Provides potential for harmonization of national standards;

Provides a reference for the whole food chain;

Provides a framework for third party certification;

What are the benefits of ISO 22000 for other stakeholders?

Fills a gap between ISO 9001:2000 and HACCP;

Contributes to a better understanding and further development of Codex HACCP;

Auditable standards with clear requirements;

System approach rather than product approach;

Suitable for regulators

Summary of benefits of ISO 22000

More efficient and dynamic food safety hazard control;

Systematic management of prerequisite programmes;

Valid basis for taking decisions;

Increased due diligence;

Control focused on what is necessary;

Saves resources by reducing overlapping system audits;

Organizes and targets communication among partners;

Resource optimization;

Improves documentation;

Better planning, less post-process verification

Conclusions

Food safety is related to the presence of and levels of food-borne hazards in food at the point of consumption. As food safety hazards may be introduced at any stage of the food chain, adequate control throughout the food chain is essential. Thus, food safety is a joint responsibility of all parties participating in the food chain;

Failures in food supply can cause human suffering, death, poor reputation, violations, poor nutrition, poor quality products and decreased profits;

ISO 22000 ensures integrity of food supply chain by minimizing food-borne hazards throughout the food chain by ensuring that there are no weak links;

It therefore makes good scientific sense for those who are involved in food processing, manufacturing, storage, distribution of food and food products to adopt and implement ISO 22000;

ISO 22000 for food safety management systems is intended to provide food safety and security;

ISO 22000 can be applied on its own or in combination with other management system standards such as ISO 9001:2000

Source: wahyuhidayati.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/benefit-of-iso-22000

ISO 9001 Vs ISO 22000

In comparison with ISO 9001, the standard is a more procedural orientated guidance than a principle based one. Apart from that, ISO 22000 is an industrial-specific risk management system for any type of food processing and marketing, which can be closely incorporated with the quality management system of ISO 9001