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Harmonisation of Global Food Safety Standards

Monday, 01 August, 2016, 08 : 00 AM [IST]

Ashwani Rathour & Veena Rathore

Introduction
Increasing urbanisation, lifestyle changes and more number of nuclear families and working women are some of the major factors leading to the rise in demand for processed foods all over the world. Majority of the foods consumed in today’s world undergo varying levels of processing, and processed foods have garnered a lot of media criticism in recent times due to various instances of contaminations and product recall. This has led to more stringent food safety and quality assurance mechanism, especially in case of global food supply chains.

The food industry across the world is facing a crisis with respect to quality benchmarking of specifications and meeting the standard of buyers. Retailers, manufacturers, food service operators, caterers, industry associations, technical experts and governments all have one thing in common when it comes to food safety. Retailers are auditing their suppliers so that they could feel confident in suppliers’ abilities to meet their food safety demands. This results in repeated auditing of suppliers by different buyers. As a matter of fact this is massive duplication of audit procedures and cost of product also goes to higher side.

To overcome this defect, the food industry has come together to improve the situation and reduce the strain on suppliers while maintaining the safety level. Customers needed a reassurance that the food they were purchasing and eating was guaranteed as safe for consumption and unnecessarily repetitive audits needed to be reduced. Due to food supply chains stretching across the globe, the end-to-end supply chain would influence the industry on an international scale. As a result of all of these combined issues, the Global Food Safety Initiative (GSFI) was developed.

All interested parties around the world joined hands together to support the creation of a benchmarking and approval scheme that would lay the foundations for an industry-wide expectation in terms of food safety management system deliverables. This became benchmark against which all food safety standards could be tested, in order to verify that the standard gained by an organisation was in fact proving that they produce or handle food at the level of safety specified.

Organisations holding a GFSI approved certification increase their chances of being a chosen supplier to retailers and/or manufacturers who demand their suppliers hold a GFSI approved certification.

What is GFSI?

Initiative of Consumer Goods Forum
GFSI is a business-driven initiative
GFSI provides a platform for collaboration

The GFSI Vision - “Safe Food for Consumers Everywhere.”

The GFSI Mission - “Provide Continuous Improvement in Food Safety Management System to ensure confidence in the delivery of safe food to consumers worldwide.”

GFSI has 4 Major Objectives

Reduce food safety risks by delivering equivalence and convergence between various food safety management systems.

Manage cost in the global food system by eliminating redundancy and improving operation efficiency.

Develop competencies and capacity building in food safety to create consistent and effective global food systems.

Provide a unique international stakeholder platform for collaboration, knowledge exchange and networking.

Each standard has a different structure and procedure for meeting each of the three main area of requirements: The Food Safety Management System; Good Manufacturing Practices, Good Distribution Practices and Good Agriculture Practices; Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP).

The Schemes
FSSC 22000; SQF Code 7th Edition Level 2

1. Safe Quality Food (SQF) Code: Developed in Western Australia but now owned by the Food Marketing Institute (FMI) in USA, the schemes aim to meet the needs of buyers and suppliers worldwide.

2. British Retail Consortium (BRC): BRC covers the supply chain with four related standards:

BRC Global Standard for Food Safety
BRC Global Standards for Storage and Distribution
BRC 10P Global Standards for Packaging and Packaging Materials
BRC Global Standard for Consumer Products

3. Food Safety System Certification FSSC 22000

This is owned by The Foundation for Food Safety Certification, the FSSC 22000 combines the ISO 22000 Food Safety Management Standard and Pre-Requisite Program (PRP) requirement along with some other requirement.

GFSI required that it is industry-owned scheme that brought two individual programmes together with an emphasis on regulatory and customer requirements. With this in mind, the FSSC 22000 was developed. This combination in the form of the FSSC 22000 created a standard that is fully recognised by the GFSI and serve as an international benchmark for food safety. The FSSC 22000 can be applied to a wide range of food manufacturing organisations. It excludes technical and technological aids. This also covers food packaging material manufacturing.

The FSSC 22000 for food and ingredients manufacturing requires that each of the following are met:

Food Safety Management System ISO 22000; Pre Requisite Programmes ISO/TS 22002-1

3.1 Aim of the Standard
To harmonise the requirements for Food Safety Management for the complete food chain on a global level.

To meet any applicable food safety related statutory and regulatory requirements.

To seek a more focussed, coherent and integrated FSMS that is required by law.

3.2 What is this standard all about?
Integrates the principles of HACCP system, application steps (of Codex) and pre-requisite programmes.

It has taken due consideration of the provision of ISO 9001:2000.
It requires an organisation to incorporate any applicable food safety related statutory and regulatory requirements into its Food Safety Management System.
It has been developed as an auditable standard.

ISO 22000 : Family of Standards

ISO 22000 – Food Safety Management Systems – Requirements for any organisation in the food chain

ISO TS 22003 – Food Safety Management Systems for bodies providing audit and certification of Food Safety Management Systems

ISO 22001 – Guidelines on the application of ISO 9001:2000 for the food and drink industry (replaces : ISO 15161:2001)

ISO TS 22004 – Food Safety Management Systems – Guidance on the application of ISO 22000:2005

ISO/TS 22002 – Prerequisite programmes on food safety Part 1 : Food manufacturing

ISO 22005 – Traceability in the feed and food chain – General principles and basic requirements for system design and implementation

Major benefits of the FSSC 22000 relate to its comprehensiveness as a Food Safety Management System standard. This is because

It is not too descriptive and has the flexibility to allow the organisation to choose the best way to control its own system.

It includes comprehensive requirement, detailing how the organisation can conduct an effective HACCP analysis.

It promotes continuous improvement in food safety.

It targets its focus on food safety and legal compliance.

It easily integrates with an organisation existing management system i.e. quality management system, environmental management systems and so on.

It allows less structured organisations to implement an externally developed system.

It is beneficial to ingredients supplier to be aligned with customers.

FSSC 22000 is well accepted European Cooperation for Accreditation (EA). Most accreditation bodies will now accept FSSC 22000.

Certification Process : FSSC 22000 and ISO 22000
Assessment Year-1 Year-2 Year-3

During auditing, the initial certification is carried out at the premises of the organisation and conducted in two stages.

In first stage, the documentation of the food safety system is evaluated which includes among other, the scope of the food safety system, the food safety hazard analysis, the PRP programme, the management structure, the policy of organisation and so on. The important objective of audit is to assess the preparedness of the organisation for the audit. Any non-conformity shall be resolved before stage-w audit. In stage-2 audit, the implementation and effectiveness of the food safety system is evaluated.

The certification shall be issued by CB within 30 days after the CB has reviewed, accepted and verified the effectiveness of the corrections and corrective action and plans of the corrections and corrective actions for the revealed non-conformities.

4. The International Features Standard (IFS)
It is developed by an association of German retailers to serve as an alternative to the BRC standards. French retailers and Italian retailers have also adopted the operation of the IFS. Now major retailers across Germany, France, Italy and many other EU countries require their suppliers to comply with the IFS. The IFS covers the complete food supply chain with these related standards IFS Food; IFS Broker; IFS Logistics; IFS Cash & Carry Wholesale; and IFS Packaging Guidelines.

5. Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) Standard
The BAP standards have been developed by the Global Aquaculture Alliance to address environmental and social responsibility, animal welfare, food safety and traceability in a voluntary certification programme for aquaculture facilities. The Global Aquaculture Alliance is a non-profit NGO working to advance environmentally and socially-responsible aquaculture and a safe supply of seafood.

6. Global Red Meat Standard
The Danish Agriculture and Food Council in cooperation with the Danish Cooperative of Slaughterhouses and the Danish Meat Institute, developed the Global red Meat Standard (GRMS). This scheme is specifically for the meat industry and aims to deliver EN45011 certified standards through an auditing programme.

7. Primary Production Schemes

7.1 Canada GAP
The Canada GAP (Good Agricultural Practices) Standard is owned by the Canada Horticultural Council and is essentially an On-Farm Food Safety (OFFS) programme. It combines natural food safety standards with a certification system for safe production, storage and packing of fresh fruits and vegetables. Each set of practices is based on the seven basic principles of HACCP and is recognised by the GFSI.

7.2 Global GAP
Global GAP promotes Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) and as such is committed to supporting food safety and sustainability in the agricultural, livestock and aquaculture supply chains.

Global GAP standards bring together the needs of agricultural producers and retailers. It covers production aspect from farm to production process.

Members of Global GAP are made up of farmers, ranchers, product marketing organisation, grovers, cooperatives, food manufacturers and retailers. These committees are supported by Food Plus, which is the Global GAP secretariat based in Germany.

8. Primary and Manufacturing Schemes
8.1 Primus GFS
The Primus GFS standard focusses on the food safety of agricultural products designated for human consumption on their fresh or in a minimally processed way. It establishes a series of requirements for managing the production, handling, processing and storing operations which should be met for consumer safety. It is a voluntary world-wide certification scheme certifying agricultural sector products.

Conclusion
As per various schemes, it has been found that organisations under FSSC 22000 are certified upon completion of a satisfactory audit and a positive certification decision from a Certification Body (CB). The CB in turn shall have been assessed and judged as competent by an accreditation body.

To receive a valid certificate, the organisation shall select a CB which is approved and licensed by the foundation.

ISO 22000 was developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and fulfils the need of

A world-wide food safety standard that is developed and owned by an independent international organisation

International harmonisation of the requirements of food safety systems

Integration of the technical (i.e. Good Practices, HACCP, Traceability) and legal food safety requirements, in the quality management system requirements of Standard ISO 90001

A food safety standard that is applicable to the whole supply chain and that requires any organisation in the chain to take into account the hazards of the final product of the chain.

This type of scheme contains the requirements for organisations in the food chain to gain certification and provide confidence to customers/retailers. This type of scheme used by the organisation to assess, develop, implement and improve its food safety system and apply for certification.

(Ashwani Rathour is VP, Reliance Retail Limited (Dairy Business), New Delhi. Veena Rathore is head, botany department,Government PG College, Nahan (HP) . They can be contacted at Ashwani.Rathour@ril.com)