What is ISO 22000 Certification? ISO 22000 Certification (Food Safety Management System ) – food safety is must and if that goes wrong you might get liquidated but stop that from happening with ISO 22000 ISO 22000 certification ensures effective processes that would deliver quality product and services consistently in order to consistently meet the expectations of customers and other stakeholders. Food safety is a global concern and countries all over the world have framed stringent regulations to ensure that the food for consumption is safe and of highest quality. ISO 22000 certification is a proof of an organization’s commitment in delivering safe food that does not cause any injury or illness. Any organization of any scale- big or small, who are involved at any stage of the food chain, i.e., production, distribution or even retail can apply for ISO 22000 certification. What are the Principles of ISO 22000 Certifications? Customer focus – aiming to improve for the betterment of the interested parties and customers, this will help one sustain customers, increase customer base, and make sure to communicate their needs and expectations by monitoring throughout the organization. Leadership – to achieve quality objectives leaders need to establish unity of purpose which is by aligning their strategy, policies, procedure, and resources this will lead to better coordination of the organization’s processes one needs to establish a culture of trust and integrity, provide people with the required resource, training, authority to act with accountability. Engagement of people – for efficiency involves people of all levels, this can be done by communicating with the employees their needs in the organization, sharing knowledge, and experience, and recognizing people’s contribution, learning, and improvement. Process approach – when activities are understood and then executed then the efficiency of the delivered output will increase, by understanding organizations’ capabilities and determining resource constraints prior to action. Improvement- improvement is important for an organization to maintain the current level of performance and to even keep on developing, this can be done by giving proper training and letting them understand how work happens with that track, reviewing and audit planning, implementation, recognizing and acknowledgment, which will result into anticipation of internal and external risks and opportunity, improved process performance. Evidence-based decision making – learn from mistakes, it is simply that decisions should be driven by evaluation of data, this will help one take better efficient solutions adding more, intuitions should never be neglected. Relationship management – manage relations with relevant interested parties such as providers, one can achieve this by keeping a well-managed supply chain that provides a stable flow of products and services, determining interested party relationship that needs to be managed, ISO 22000 Benefits ISO 22000 Certification can help organizations in the following ways:- Improved communication within the organization and better management of the processes. It’s a guarantee of the quality, safety, and reliability of food products. It reduces the costs that might have otherwise been incurred from recalls of unfit products. A significant boost to your image in the market and enhanced brand loyalty. Higher confidence in disclosures. Prevention of food-borne diseases. Boost the employees’ morale. Effective utilization of resources. Timely and efficient food safety hazard control. Systematic management of prerequisite programmers. Effective decision-making. ISO 22000 Requirements The Annex SL of the High-Level Structure of ISO 22000 standard contains some compulsory requirements for the effective implementation of the Food Safety Management System (FSMS) in an organization. These are enlisted from sections 4 to 10 of the Annex SL document. However, the first three sections mostly introduce the standard and composition of scope, normative references, and terms and definitions.  The specific requirements for FSMS are mentioned in the later seven sections. Section 4: Context of the organization- It includes all those factors that might affect your organization. They may be external or internal and can affect the interested parties such as customers, clients, contractors, stakeholders, etc. Section 5: Leadership – This section deals with the responsibilities of top management in ensuring an effective FSMS in the organization. It provides a method of assigning roles transparently to the staff and ensuring smooth communication throughout. Section 6: Planning – This section deals with the timely identification of risks and the preparation of action plans to deal with them. Section 7: Support – In this section, the organization is made aware of the tools, technologies, and resources that are required for the implementation of FSMS. Section 8: Operation – This section provides for the assessment of the existing procedures and compliance with the legal obligations. The key requirement is to perform risk assessments regularly. Section 9: Performance evaluation – The performance of your FSMS can be regularly evaluated through monitoring and measurement. This ensures the ability of your management system to meet the objectives determined by your organization. Section 10: Improvement – This section ensures that your organization is able to meet the changing market demands by continually improving the management system. PDCA Cycle Plan – to think that what do we need to achieve in our organization Do – to execute a planned action which will help us achieve the required objective Check – monitor against the standards) (policies, objectives, requirements) Action – finally implementing what has been rechecked. ISO Certification Process Stage One (documentation review) – At this stage, the auditors from the certification body verify that your documentation meets the requirements of ISO 22000. Stage Two (main audit) – In this stage, the realities of your processes are matched with your statements in the documentation for their compliance with the requirements of ISO 22000 standards clauses. the certification process goes further. Click here to view the next steps in the ISO certification process   If you are business-based, this section will guide you on obtaining ISO 22000 certifications in your organization. Once you have developed your FSMS, it becomes important for you to operate it for some time and document the process before deciding to invite a ISO certification body for ISO 22000 certification. You will need to fill up an application form that … Continue reading ISO 22000 Certification