ISO 22000:2018 – Food safety management systems – Requirements

ISO 22000 is the one of the popular international standard published by ISO (link to – www.iso.org).Published in 2005, today it is in its second edition, ISO 22000:2018. As per a survey conducted by ISO in 2012, globally there are total 23,231 organizations certified to ISO 22000.

ISO 22000 prescribes the criteria for a food safety management system that an organization may want to build. Any type of an organization within a food chain can refer to these criteria and develop its own food safety management system. Once all applicable criteria are addressed, the organization can get this food safety management system certified from a third party certification body.

Most organizations within the food chain develop a food safety management system because –

  • There is a need to assure their customers that the organization has a food safety management system in place to ensure that the food is safe for the consumer. A certification to ISO 22000 will provide that confidence to the organization’s customers.
  • The organizations need to keep on improving internally so that they are able to achieve customer satisfaction. An application of ISO 22000 offers a framework to the organization where continual improvement process is established for evaluating and assessing customer requirements that relates to food safety and demonstrating conformity to these requirements.

ISO 22000 helps the organizations build a strong customer focus and ensures consistent top management commitment. It also brings in a process approach wherein all processes in the system are managed for building efficiencies and effectiveness.

Benefits

The benefits that an organization may get out of the application of ISO 22000 and its certification are mostly based on the management’s intentions of selecting this standard. However, following examples provide some direction about what the ISO 22000 can give the organizations in terms of its benefits

“It is our practice to understand the benefits that our customers want by applying ISO 22000 and then design the system in a way to help the organization to realize these benefits”.

An ISO 22000 certified organization is considered to be more reliable than the other similar organizations that are not certified. The certification is globally accepted and is gained by large as well as small organizations hence bring an equality in terms its positioning of brand reliability per say. The certification adds up to the brand recognition.

 Interested parties of an organization include its customers, owners, employees, suppliers, bankers, etc. All these have certain expectations in terms of the performance of the organization. Due to the improved consistency of the organization after application of ISO 22000 based food safety management system, the organization’s performance becomes more and more reliable. As a result the trust level and confidence of all these interested parties get a boost.

 The ISO 22000 requires the organization to establish certain pre-requisite programmes that in most cases meet the statutory and regulatory requirements pertaining to food hygiene. Thus the organization witnesses an improved compliance to such requirements.

 By consistently delivering safe to consume food, an ISO 20000 certified organization contributes to the betterment of the society in terms of reduction in food borne diseases.

By adopting the various measures through an application of the food safety management system, the product shelf life improves due to the reduction in the contamination.

Applicability

The ISO 22000 standard applies to any organization that is a part of the entire food chain. Organizations within food chain range from feed producers and primary producers through food manufacturers, transport and storage operators and subcontractors to retail and food service outlets. It also includes related organizations such as producers of equipment, packaging material, cleaning agents, additives and ingredients.

Browse through the solutions for different industries based on our experience of some of the types of organizations that we have worked with in the past.

Roadmap to certification

ProcessLOGIX helps the customers from initiation of the quality management system development till certification to ISO 22000.

Following 12-step process describes the high level approach to implementation and certification