ISO 22000 Certification

Courtesy: ISO 22000 Certification

The consequences of unsafe food can be serious. ISO’s food safety management standards help organizations identify and control food safety hazards, at the same time as working together with other ISO management standards, such as ISO 9001. Applicable to all types of producer, ISO 22000 provides a layer of reassurance within the global food supply chain, helping products cross borders and bringing people food that they can trust.

ISO 22000 and FSSC 22000 are both international standards and both relate to the most important components for ensuring food safety. Two certification schemes that are very similar and play a key role in ensuring safe and high-quality food products. What are the most important differences?

The two schemes are very similar, because the FSSC 22000 scheme uses ISO 22000 as a requirement for the management system. However, the FSSC 22000 contains additional requirements, including the Pre-Requisite Program (PRP), or universal procedures used to control the operating conditions in food factories and the specific requirements of the FSSC to ensure consistency, integrity and management of the system itself.

The main difference between the two certifications is that the FSSC 22000 scheme, in contrast to the ISO standard, is recognized by the GFSI (Global Food Safety Initiative). GFSI recognition demonstrates that the scheme meets the highest standards globally leading to international food industry acceptance.

ISO 22000:2018 Certification for Food Safety Management System is a process control system designed to improve quality of the food organizations by identification, evaluation and control of the food safety hazards like physical, chemical, microbiological and other hazards in food production as well as entire food chain. ISO 22000 defines and follows HACCP guidelines, which includes steps designed to prevent problems before they occur and to correct deviations through a systematic way as soon as they are detected. Such preventive control systems with documentation and verification are widely recognized by scientific authorities and international organizations as the most effective approach available for producing safe food.