Food Safety Magazine, February/March 2013

PROCESS CONTROLBy John G. Surak, Ph.D.ISO 22000: And the BeatGoes OnInternational growth of ISO22000 deserves attentionInternational Organization for Standardization (ISO)22000 is a unique food safety management systemstandard. The standard is nonprescriptive since itdescribes the requirements for a food safety managementsystem. However, the standard and the guidancestandards do not define what specific actions an organizationmust take to meet these requirements. The organizationmust determine these actions and then show anauditor that these actions are effective in controlling theidentified food safety hazards.Adoption of ISO 22000 is growing internationally.In 2007, approximately 4,000 standards were issuedworldwide. Currently, the number of certifications hasincreased to approximately 18,000 certificates worldwide.The majority of certifications has been awarded tofood processing operations in Asia and Europe. Table 1CountryNumber of ISO 22000CertificatesChina 5,575Greece 1,197Turkey 1,088India 1,020Taipei, Taiwan 949Romania 641Poland 626Japan 482Spain 364Egypt 276Table 1: Number of ISO 22000 Certificates Issued by Countrypresents the top 10 countries that haveISO 22000 certificates granted to foodprocessors by country.In addition, over 2,680 Food SafetySystem Certification (FSSC) 22000certificates have been awarded internationally,with 40 percent being awardedto sites in Europe, 30 percent to sites inthe United States and 20 percent to sitesin Asia. FSSC 22000 is a Global FoodSafety Initiative (GFSI)-recognized foodsafety management audit scheme. It usesISO 22000 and appropriate ISO 22002standards to define the requirements fora food safety management system.Since ISO 22000 is a nonprescriptivestandard, it provides both opportunitiesand challenges to organizations thatdesire to implement the requirements.The primary opportunities focus onthe fact that some companies with ahighly developed food safety managementsystem may be already meeting thestandard’s requirements. However, thechallenges are just the opposite of theopportunities. Organizations that wantto implement ISO 22000 must haveaccess to professionals who understandfood safety systems so that the foodsafety management system can be properlydesigned and implemented.The implementation process consistsof three parts:1. First, the organization must understandthe requirements of thestandard.2. Second, it must understand whatmust be done to implement the standard’srequirements.3. Third, the organization must developa plan to meet the requirements ofthe standard.In response to market needs, ISO subcommittee(SC) 17 1 has been developinga number of standards and guidancepublications to support the use of ISO22000. Table 2 lists current and plannedpublications that support ISO 22000 inthe ISO 22000 family of standards.16 F o o d S a f e t y M a g a z i n e