ISO/IEC 22001 Food Safety Management System

Food Safety Management System (FSMS) enables companies to provide trust to customers and consumers about the corporate capability to manage the food safety related risks.

The ISO/IEC 22001 standard has been developed within ISO and IEC 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.

FSMS is a risk management tool specifically designed for the food industry in order to assure food safety. It specifies requirements for food safety, where an organization in the food chain needs to demonstrate its ability to control food safety hazards in order to ensure that food is safe at the time of human consumption.

ISO/IEC 22001 is designed to allow all types of organizations 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 sub-contractors to retail and food service outlets together with related organizations such as producers of equipment, packaging material, cleaning agents,

Adoption to these standards changes the concerned company’s approach from retroactive quality testing to a preventive work culture. Companies face strong requirements from legislators, customers and consumers to assure consistently safe production processes. A commitment to conscious risk management will be one of the main competitive advantages.

• A significant reduction in metal contamination incidents/events, achieved as a result of enhancing their HACCP process and using the conclusions from the HACCP study to convince the senior management team to spend large sums of money in upgrading screens, sieves and metal detection equipment.
• A greater and more widespread understanding of food safety issues across the company, through enhanced internal communication arrangements.
• A widely understood and very well implemented corrective action process which actually prevents recurrence of food safety issues.
• A more effective change management system, that is preventive in nature and which interfaces very well with the HACCP process. The HACCP system does not have to play "catch up" following changes to processes, products, materials etc.
• Enhanced focus on the "real" CCP's, enabling better control measure management. There is a clear distinction between CCP's and OPRP's, backed up by a robust risk assessment and decision-making approach.
• A more integrated approach to conducting management reviews and managing improvement programmes, which combines food safety matters and other issues.
• Clearer, more visible and widely understood reporting relationships, document control mechanisms, records control mechanisms and staff development processes.
• A control measure validation approach which gives confidence in the food safety controls implemented.

How we can help you?

• Review your operation and identify possible areas for improvement
• Help you develop a Safety Management System to meet your requirements
• Develop and document your processes and procedures
• Train your staff in safety methods and principles
• Assist with the selection of an external certification body
• Act as your representative at safety system assessments
• Assist with the use of mitigating tools and techniques
• Keep you up to date with changes