ISO 22000

During last decades the stream of food scandals has caused that the hygiene and food safety have become the main subject of the consumers interests all around the world. Concerning the fact that these threats do not have the borders, public pressure for the all-European implementation of measures has grown with the main objective to increase the food safety. EU reacted by the elaboration of number of legal regulations within the food safety area. These regulations had to be implemented by producers to their management systems within the short time. This has put pressure on food producers, processors, and distributors to clearly, transparently, and credibly demonstrate — in the face of competition — their ability to meet safety and hygiene requirements in practice throughout the entire food chain.

The base management tool for above mentioned requirements fulfilment and obtaining of customer’ s trust is the implementation of food safety management system (FSMS) according to international standard ISO 22000.

This international standard specifies the requirements for a structured food safety management system that combines generally recognized key elements of food safety assurance by integrating the principles of the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) system with a set of Prerequisite Programs (PRPs).

Implementation and certification of food safety management system according to standard ISO 22000 brings to organization advantages in many areas:

Internal advantages for organization:

• Improvement of hygiene, technological discipline
• Improvement of management and personnel communication
• Review of tasks and explicit specification of individual employees responsibilities, improvement of work discipline
• More effective checking of processes, employees, suppliers, raw materials and final products
• Possibility of permanent improvement
• Compatibility with the system of quality management according to standard ISO 9001 and other management systems

External advantages for organization:

• Building consumer confidence in food safety
• Improvement of company’s image in the eye of consumer
• Improvement of legal protection of organization
• Less pressure from regulatory authorities
• Easier introduction and promotion of new products on the market

Standard ISO 22000 provides the manual for building up and maintenance of effectively working food safety management system. A certified organisation is qualified to use a certification mark.