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ISO 22000 or FSSC 22000
Choosing the right system for your company
How can your organization choose the right Food Safety
Management System Standard: ISO22000 or FSSC 22000?
Choosing a management system standard
There have been an abundance of food safety standards throughout
the world, but there arealso variations between standards, their
implementation and their auditing. With the successthat the
International Organization of Standardization (ISO) has had with
harmonization of standards, it was logical that they be the ones to
take on this issue through the development of an ISO Food Safety
Standard. The standard, ISO 22000 was released in 2005. Since
its
release it has been successfully implemented in hundreds of
companies around the world. TheISO 22000 Standard can be applied to
any organization in the food chain, from the farm tothe food
packaging producer.
However, the Global Food Safety Initiative is another
organization playing an important rolein Food Safety Systems. This
organization has benchmarked four existing food safetyschemes. Once
a system is benchmarked it means that certification to the scheme
isaccepted by organizations requiring a GFSI scheme. The current
list of GFSI schemesincludes IFS, SQF, BRC and Dutch HACCP.
Having a GFSI recognized certification can be important to a
company that is selling to one
of the major retailers that has chosen to require a GFSI scheme.
Because this list includessuch giants as Wal-Mart, Carrefour,
Tesco, Metro, Migros, Ahold, and Delhaize, the GFSIrecognition is
very important to many food companies.
The question then, was could ISO 22000 be added to the list of
GFSI standards? After areview of the requirements of the standard,
it was determined that for the food manufacturers,GFSI would like
to see more specific Prerequisite Program Requirements. This led to
thedevelopment of a specific document PAS 200 (Published by BSI)
specifying detailed PRPrequirements for manufactures in the food
industry.
The combination of the PRP document, PAS 220 and the ISO 22000
standard have now been benchmarked by GFSI. The GFSI benchmarked
registration scheme is FSSC 22000. Toregister, a company will
implement both the requirements of ISO 22000 and the PRPprograms in
PAS 22000. FSSC 22000 will only apply to food manufacturers,
otherorganizations in the food chain will use ISO 22000.
The next step is to have an Owner for the scheme. The "owner" of
FSSC 22000 is theFoundation for Food Safety Certification (FSSC),
which will maintain the ownership andaccredit certification
bodies.
So how do you choose between ISO 22000 and FSSC 22000?
This decision will be driven by your market. If you are not a
food manufacturer, the ISO22000 will be the applicable standard. If
you are a food manufacturer, your choice will be
