ISO 22000 Certification-Requirements Businesses Need To Meet And Fulfill
Need For A Food Safety Management System:
Humans need three basic things to survive and life becomes difficult if any one of these three things is not available to them. One of these fundamental things is food that humans need in the purest form. Any kind of adulterate in it can cause massive health disorders that are often not good. To ensure the supply of the best foodstuff, the need for a robust Food Safety Management System was felt. The efforts were made to ensure the availability of the best food from farm to fork, here, involvement of every component in the food supply chain is a must. A Food Safety Management System has been a prominent effort for ensuring the availability of the best and safest food to every consumer.
What does ISO 22000 Mean?
ISO 22000 is a globally-accepted Food Safety Management System (FSMS) that any company or organization in the food chain must accept and follow so that they ensure the supply of the safest food to their buyers or consumers. Becoming certified to ISO 22000 means that a company promises its customers that it has a food safety management system in place. It assures the buyers of the quality and standard of the food they are buying and consuming. This is becoming increasingly important as customers look for the safest food and food processors demand ingredients obtained from suppliers that are safe.
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) conceptualized and developed ISO 22000 certification which stands as the most powerful Food Safety Management System Certification. Most member countries of the ISO use this Quality Management System approach and have got the tailor-made version that certification that they can apply to Food Safety. Here, the utilization and fulfillment of HACCP principles are a must. ISO has specific needs for Food Safety Management Systems processes and procedures and requires that the association instrument criterion programs and HACCP.
Is Following ISO 22000 Compulsory For The Companies Involved In Food Supply?
Without any doubt, the answer is ‘Yes.’ Since supplying the best and the safest food is a basic responsibility of the food supply companies, therefore they cannot deny getting ISO 22000 certification. The certification is applicable to any company or component in the food supply chain, irrespective of their size, from feed producers, primary producers through food manufacturers, transport and storage operators, and dealers of food outlets.
Additionally ISO has made it compulsory for inter-related organizations such as producers of various machines and devices, packing material, cleaning representatives, seasonings, and ingredients. It may be applied to all immediate or intermediate service providers involved in the food chain business. In brief, all the ISO 22000 certification requirements apply to any products that contact the food industry or the food chain.
What are the requirements of ISO 22000 Certification?
Well, there are many important requirements that all the companies related to food supply need to meet. Some of the prominent ones include the following:
- To make the right plan, implement, function, uphold and inform FSMS providing foodstuffs that are safe in their proposed use
- To validate obedience with appropriate constitutional and supervisory food security needs
- To assess and evaluate jointly decided purchaser food safety requirements and to prove conventionality with them
- To successfully connect food safety matters to absorbed parties within the food chain
- To safeguard that the body imitates to its specified nourishment safety policy
- To prove traditionalism to pertinent absorbed parties
- To pursue guarantee or registering of its FSMS by an outside group, or brand a self-assessment of conformity to this document.
Does ISO 22000 also include specifications of ISO 9001?
To be very precise, the answer is ‘Yes.’ It is just because of the fact that both ISO 22000 and ISO 9001 have a common format and objective. ISO 22000 has established a combined authorization System by adding an ISO 9001 module to the existing FSSC 22000 necessities. offering FSSC 22000 and ISO 9001 certifications for safety and quality.
What are some more requirements that Companies must fulfill to obtain ISO 22000 Certification?
Apart from the chief requirements mentioned above, the applicants for ISO 22000 certification should also fulfill some more requirements. These include the following:
- Measures for product recall
- Food security, biovigilance, and biological terrorism
- Apparatus appropriateness, cleaning, and maintenance
- Waste disposal
- Prevention of cross-contamination
- Pest control
- Employee facilities and personal hygiene
- Management of purchased material
- Cleaning and sanitizing procedures
- The construction and layout of buildings
- Product information
- Warehousing
- Pest control
- Utilities, including energy, water, and air
Summing Up:
While applying for the ISO 22000 certification, the service providers are very particular about fulfilling all the norms that the leading ISO 22000 Certification Service Providers insist on. Since these people have in-depth knowledge in this domain, therefore you can always get some clear benefits in completing the process of getting the certification.