Food Safety and ISO 22000

By Stephen Upton, NQA Food Safety Business Unit Manager

March 11th 2008 it was reported in the Wall Street Journal that records had been set with
the biggest recall of meat (over 143 million pounds) since records began. The article
went on to say that millions of dollars had been spent on the processing plants
infrastructure, including stainless steel paneling and a state of the art cleaning system,
only to fall to procedures and processes that gone awry in the plants’ cattle pens.

This issue, and others like it including impatience with governmental responses and fear
of the effects that major recalls will have on customer confidence, has pushed the major
food retailers to look towards the private or third party inspection service providers to
ensure food safety to the consumer.

The European market place for food imported into the community now exceeds $20
billion per year and is expected to grow by 10% to 20% over the next few years but the
number of product recalls is far less than here in the USA! Why you may ask? Because
the EU quickly identified private programs such as the BRC (British Retail Consortium)
where a number of customers banded together to set global requirements for the
importation of meats, fruits and vegetables on producers.

Wal-Mart has recently announced that they will now buy produce, meat and seafood
only from suppliers accredited by private inspection regulators; previously they aligned
ISO 22000.2005 as one of the acceptable standards. Where Wal-Mart goes others will
surely follow?

FSMS (food safety management systems) are here to stay. ISO 22000.2005 has been
designed to meet the needs of customers, suppliers and consumers alike, based on
prevention rather than the present system of detection after the food has already hit the
market. This standard is set to grow here in North America as consumers decide that
the will no longer be the guinea pigs for food safety!

NQA is adding the scope of FSMS and HACCP approval to its own scope of accredited
standards and expects fully approval by the end of March 2008 to provide ISO 22000
registration. NQA will be one of the first US based registrars with this approval and
expects our number of accredited organizations to quickly grow as consumers recognize
the effect FSMS’s have on food safety.

To find out more about this industry and how your organization can implement an
effective FSMS, contact me at SUpton@nqa-usa.com.