Apart from the mandatory regulation, there are certain organizations such as CODEX & ISO that sets the voluntary standards to harmonize international national food safety regulations to facilitate global trading. The importance of voluntary standards has grown in recent years, contributing to higher growth rates in international trade, especially in agricultural products, than achieved in many more traditional markets. Though these standards are voluntary, they still hold high importance by the food processing industry and are often mandated internally by the importing entity. Meeting the requirements under these standards ensures higher food safety and much acceptability.

We assist the food businesses in the gap assessment through internal audit, implementation of the standards, drafting of the requisite documents and support in an external audit conducted by the certification agency.

ISO 22000:2018 Food Safety Management System

ISO 22000, Food safety management systems (FSMS) is an international standard developed by the International Organization for Standardization applicable to all the organizations involved throughout the food and feed chain, regardless of size or sector. This standard aims at controlling food safety hazards along the food and feed chain. To make sure that the ISO 22000, Food safety management continues to serve organizations and keep its relevance in today’s market place. ISO 22000 is applicable to all organizations in the food and feed industries, regardless of size or sector.

ISO 22000:2005, the international food safety standard that specifies the requirements to ensure safe production within the entire food chain, from farm to fork, has now been revised and updated and ISO 22000:2018 has been released. The objective of this update has been to harmonize the scheme with other standards following the ISO high-level structure. Anyone currently certified in ISO 22000:2005 will have 3 years to transition over to the new standard.

The revised Food Safety Management System of ISO 22000 has been published on June 19, 2018 marking the start of 3 year transition period (until June 19 2021) for all certified companies i.e. with this release, ISO 22000:2005 will be withdrawn from consideration.

So, if you are certified to the ISO 22000:2005 standard, you will have to migrate to ISO 22000:2018 until June 19, 2021 in order to maintain the validity of the certification. Hence, we recommend you to start your transition preparation as soon as possible to incorporate all needed changes into your existing management system and stand out at a global level.

FSSC 22000 requirements

FSSC 22000 v5 launched in 2019, which reflects several developments in the market. It specifically targets the food, feed and packaging manufacturing sector as well as the storage and distribution, catering and retail/wholesale sectors. In addition, it takes into consideration the Global Food Safety Initiative’s (GFSI) requirements.

FSSC 22000 is a combination of ISO 22000 (Food Safety Management System requirements), ISO/TS 22002-1 pre-requisite programs on food safety part-1 for food industries and packaging, and PAS 223 prerequisite for packaging and packaging materials. Since 2010, FSSC 22000 is fully recognized by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) and is based on existing ISO standards.

The FSSC scheme has 3 required components:

• ISO 22000 provides common framework acorss the entire supply chain to manage requirements, communication internally and externally, and continually improve the system
• PRPs – Sector specific pre-requisite programs( ISO / TS standards / BSI PAS)
• FSSC 22000 requirements – FSSC 22000 adds specific requiremetns to ensure consistency, integrity and to provide governance and management of the scheme.

The latest version of FSSC 22000 was released June 3 2019. Version 5 is a revised version of FSSC 22000 v 4.1, formally launched in July 2017. Audits against the former version FSSC 22000 v 4.1 are only allowed until 31 December 2019 and all issued FSSC 22000 certificates v 4.1 will become invalid after 29 June 2021. Upgrade audits against FSSC 22000 v 5 scheme requirements shall be conducted between 1 January 2020 and 31 December 2020.

BRC (British Retail Consortium) requirements

The BRCGS (British Retail Consortium Global Standards) are specifications developed by the British Retail Consortium in response to the needs of UK members of the consortium. The British Retail Consortium (BRCGS) is the trade association of a range of independent retailers, large multiples and department stores, selling a wide range of products. BRCGS Global Standards are used by suppliers and global retailers. The BRCGS is a food safety certification and the standard is recognized by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI).

The BRCGS Global Standards are a group of four industry-leading Technical Standards that specify requirements to be met by an organization to enable the production, packaging, storage and distribution of safe food and consumer products.

The BRCGS Global Standards are a set of four Technical Standards:

• BRCGS Global standard For Food
• BRCGS Global Standard for Packaging & Packaging Material
• BRCGS Global standard for consumer product
• BRCGS Global Standard for Storage & Distribution

GFSI (Global Food Safety Initiative) requirements

GFSI stands for The Global Food Safety Initiative. It is a business-driven initiative for the development of food safety management systems to ensure food facilities are processing safe food for consumers. The GFSI is a private organization that oversees and approves different auditing platforms as meeting their criteria. This criterion provides a universal gold-standard of recognition to specific food safety audits.

GFSI has created a benchmarking process where they compare procedures of food safety-related schemes or platforms to the GFSI Guidance Document. A food safety scheme is recognized by GFSI when it meets the food safety requirements defined in the GFSI Guidance Documents. Remember that GFSI is an organization that benchmarks and approves different auditing standards. There isn't technically any single audit called "The GFSI Audit," but there are several standards that are GFSI-benchmarked.

GFSI benchmarked schemes:

• Primus GFS
• Global Aquaculture Alliance Seafood
• Global Gap
• FSSC 22000
• Global Red Meat Standard
• Canadagap
• SQF
• BRCGS Global Standard
• IFS International Featured Standards
• Japan Food Safety Management Association

SQF Requirements

SQF—Safe Quality Food— is a program initiated by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI). It works on the vision ‘one world; one standard’ to meet the food safety management requirements of suppliers and buyers across the globe. SQF is owned and regulated by the Safe Quality Food Institute (SQFI), a division of the Food Marketing Institute (FMI). SQF certification is a program initiated to reduce the need for multiple food safety audits.

Getting SQF Certified enables your organization to comply with international and domestic food safety regulations providing the suppliers with an assurance that food has been produced, and handled according to the highest viable standards.

All Audits are to be administered under the recent revision to Edition 8 compliant SQF Food Safety Management System of the SQF Code as of January 1, 2018.