Certifications

ISO 22000:Food Safety System

ISO 22000Food safety is a global concern. Public health issues can significantly impact on trade. Legislation, in most countries, requires proprietors of food companies to implement HACCP principles into food production systems. A management system based on HACCP principles allows organizations to identify, document, maintain and review food hazards that occur during the food production process.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 22000:2005 Standard:Requirements for a Food Safety Management System demonstrates an organization’s commitment to food safety, and provides a means to demonstrate that an organization is taking the necessary steps to control food safety hazards. .

The standard has three parts:

• Good manufacturing practices (GMP) or pre-requisite programs requirements
• HACCP principles
• Management system requirements

ISO 22001:2005: applies to all organizations, regardless of their size, that impact the food chain. This includes ingredient suppliers, equipment manufacturers, package suppliers, service providers, farmers, food processors, and catering and retailing organizations.

Benifits

• Allows organization within the food chain to demonstrate their commitment to food safety.
• Improved internal and external communication.
• Ability to show control of known food hazards
• Continuous improvement of an organization's food safety management system.
• Use of the internationally recognized NSF certification mark.
• Enables an organization to align its food safety management system with other recognized management systems such as quality (ISO 9001) and environmental (ISO 14001)

HACCP

Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) is a process control system designed to identify and prevent microbial and other hazards in food production. It includes steps designed to prevent problems before they occur and to correct deviations as soon as they are detected. Such preventive control system with documentation and verification are widely recognized by scientific authorities and international organizations as the most effective approach available for producing safe food.

HACCP involves a system approach to identification of hazard, assessment of chances of occurrence of hazards during each phase, raw material procurement, manufacturing, distribution, usage of food products, and in defining the measures for hazard control. In doing so, the many drawbacks prevalent in the inspection approach are provided and HACCP overcomes shortcomings of reliance only on microbial testing.

I enables the producers, processors, distributors, exporters, etc, of food products to utilize technical resources efficiently and in a cost effective manner in assuring food safety. Food inspection too would be more systematic and therefore hassle-free. It would no doubt involve deployment of some additional finances initially but this would be more than compensated in the long run through consistently better quality and hence better prices and returns.