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Articles: ISO 22000 for safe food
supply chains |
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ISO 22000 for safe food supply chains
ISO 22000, published during September 2005, is a new
International Standard designed to ensure safe food
supply chains worldwide.
ISO 22000:2005, Food safety management systems - Requirements for any organization in the food chain,
provides a framework of internationally harmonized
requirements for the global approach that is needed. The
standard has been developed within ISO by experts from
the food industry, along with representatives of
specialized international organizations and in close
cooperation with the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the
body jointly established by the United Nations’ Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Health
Organization (WHO) to develop food standards.
A major resulting benefit is that ISO 22000 will make it
easier for organizations worldwide to implement the
Codex HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point)
system for food hygiene in a harmonized way, which does
not vary with the country or food product concerned.
Food reaches consumers via supply chains that may link
many different types of organizations and that may
stretch across multiple borders. One weak link can
result in unsafe food that is dangerous to health – and
when this happens, the hazards to consumers can be
serious and the cost to food chain suppliers
considerable. As food safety hazards can enter the food
chain at any stage, adequate control throughout is
essential. Food safety is a joint responsibility of all
the actors in the food chain and requires their combined
efforts.
ISO 22000 is therefore designed to allow all types of
organization within the food chain to implement a food
safety management system. These range from feed
producers, primary producers, food manufacturers,
transport and storage operators and subcontractors to
retail and food service outlets – together with related
organizations such as producers of equipment, packaging
material, cleaning agents, additives and ingredients.
The standard has become necessary because of the
significant increase of illnesses caused by infected
food in both developed and developing countries. In
addition to the health hazards, food-borne illnesses can
give rise to considerable economic costs covering
medical treatment, absence from work, insurance payments
and legal compensation.
As a result, a number of countries have developed
national standards for the supply of safe food and
individual companies and groupings in the food sector
have developed their own standards or programmes for
auditing their suppliers. The plethora of more than 20
different such schemes worldwide generates risks of
uneven levels of food safety, confusion over
requirements, and increased cost and complication for
suppliers that find themselves obliged to conform to
multiple programmes.
ISO 22000, backed by international consensus, harmonizes
the requirements for systematically managing safety in
food supply chains and offers a unique solution for good
practice on a worldwide basis. In addition, food safety
management systems that conform to ISO 22000 can be
certified – which answers the growing demand in the food
sector for the certification of suppliers – although the
standard can be implemented without certification of
conformity, solely for the benefits it provides.
Developed with the participation of food sector experts,
ISO 22000 incorporates the principles of HACCP, and
covers the requirements of key standards developed by
various global food retailer syndicates, in a single
document.
Another benefit of ISO 22000 is that it extends the
successful management system approach of the ISO
9001:2000 quality management system standard which is
widely implemented in all sectors but does not itself
specifically address food safety. The development of ISO
22000 was based on the assumption that the most
effective food safety systems are designed, operated and
continually improved within the framework of a
structured management system, and incorporated into the
overall management activities of the organization.
While ISO 22000 can be implemented on its own, it is
designed to be fully compatible with ISO 9001:2000 and
companies already certified to ISO 9001 will find it
easy to extend this to certification to ISO 22000. To
help users to do so, ISO 22000 includes a table showing
the correspondence of its requirements with those of ISO
9001:2000.
ISO 22000:2005 is the first in a family of standards
that will include the following documents:
• ISO/TS 22004, Food safety management systems –
Guidance on the applicationof ISO 22000:2005,
which would have been published by November 2005,
provides important guidance that can assist
organizations including small and medium-sized
enterprises.
• ISO/TS 22003, Food safety management systems –
Requirements for bodies providing audit and
certification of food safety management systems,
will give harmonized guidance for the accreditation
(approval) of ISO 22000 certification bodies and define
the rules for auditing a food safety management system
as conforming to the standard. It will be published in
the first quarter of 2006.
• ISO 22005, Traceability in the feed and food
chain – General principles and guidance for system
design and development, will shortly be
circulated as a Draft International Standard. |
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