Food Safety Magazine - June/July 2013

Process control
By Richard F. Stier and John G. Surak, Ph.D.
Understanding the “Other”
Clauses of ISO 22000
A closer look at ISO 22000
The ISO 22000 standard “Food Safety Management
Systems — Requirements for Any
Organization in the Food Chain” is just what
the title says it is: a food safety management
system (FSMS) with emphasis on the words
management and system. Since this standard was issued in
September 2005, it has been widely adopted globally. At
the time this article was being prepared, over 2,400 companies
throughout the world had received ISO 22000
certifications or its offspring, Food Safety System Certification
(FSSC) 22000. FSSC 22000 is basically the ISO
22000 standard plus ISO 22002-1:2009 “Prerequisite
programmes on food safety – Part 1: Food manufacturing.”
FSSC 22000 was developed to meet the benchmarking
requirements for the Global Food Safety Initiative
(GFSI) (see “GFSI-Benchmarked Audit Schemes,”
p. 20). GFSI felt that ISO 22000 did not provide
sufficient guidance to companies for the prerequisite
programs. Besides those companies seeking certification
of an FSMS, there are many that utilize ISO 22000 as
a framework to develop an FSMS but have elected not
to spend the money on certification. Buyers throughout
the world now mandate that their suppliers adopt one of
the GFSI-approved audit schemes to ensure the safety of
what they are purchasing.
The building blocks of the ISO 22000 standard are:
1. Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HAC-
CP) as defined in the Codex Food Hygiene document
2. Prerequisite programs that define the basic conditions
to maintain an hygienic environment
3. The components that are needed to
have an effective management
system
The final building block is based
on ISO 9001:2000 and ISO 9001:2008
“Quality management systems – Requirements.”
It is these elements that
have occasionally given companies,
especially in the U.S., some problems.
By this, we mean there are some clauses
that are literally a new paradigm for
these operators. The FSSC 22000
management system is more than a
superenhanced food safety system. It is
a system that defines how food safety
must be managed in the company.
Building a successful FSMS using either
ISO 22000 or FSSC 22000 is a multistep
process. Figure 1 shows the process
from management commitment to certification.
The different clauses in ISO 22000
may be seen in “ISO Clauses,” p. 20.
The specific clauses that have given
people some problems include:
• Management responsibility, specifically
management commitment,
communication and management
review
• Human Resources — Competence
and work environment
• FSMS verification, specifically internal
audits, process validation,
prerequisite program verification and
continual improvement
Processors generally understand
how to develop, implement and document
an HACCP program. It has been
25 years since the Codex Food Hygiene
document and since the National
Advisory Committee on Microbiological
Criteria for Foods published their
harmonized HACCP documents. Since
that time, HACCP has been driven by
economic and regulatory pressures. In
the U.S., HACCP has been mandated
for seafood, meat and poultry, as well
as by buyers for all types of industries.
However, it will be mandatory for all
16 F o o d S a f e t y M a g a z i n e