LRQA Business Assurance Food Safety Blog, February 2011
28th February 2011 by Cor Groenveld2 Comments
February 28- Day 16 LRQA Business Assurance Food Blog
Certification and a Food Safety Culture
For the 3rd party certification and assurance industry, the GFSI and the Global Food Safety Conference (GFSC) are a sector specific example of how independent assurance can protect brand reputation.
Last week’s GFSC placed the role of 3rd party certification at the centre of the food supply chain. The conference, under the “Developing a Food Safety Culture”, openly and honestly discussed the role of management systems implementation and assessment. It started on the morning of day one, with Catherine Francois, Director of GFSI Food Programmes, communicating the results of the GFSC delegate survey. The single most important issue for delegates of the event was auditor competency.
Throughout the event, there were case studies and examples cited of certification helping and hurting organisations and their supply chain. The value of independent assessment was praised and questioned throughout the event. Those are the discussions that LRQA welcomes. We believe that certification bodies need to be transparent, clearly add value to the organisations they assess and, above all, provide confidence to stakeholders that independent assessment can help ensure confidence in the systems and processes that companies have in place to run their business. To be able to do that effectively and efficiently, auditors need to understand the business they are assessing. Put simply, if an auditor is assessing a meat factory, that individual should have the knowledge and/or experience in the meat industry. It is not enough for that auditor to have worked in some other part of the food supply chain. We understand that this presents certification bodies with a resource dilemma. There are only so many auditors with experience in each of the sub-industries that make up the food supply chain. But, we believe it is essential to have sector-specific auditors, ones with enough training (both before they start assessing and, equally as important, once they are out in the field delivering audits).
Overall, the majority of delegates agreed that in order to develop a successful food safety culture, independent, robust assessment will have to be present. When the costs of failure in the food supply chain are measured in lives, money and brand reputation, the cost of 3rd party certification is put into perspective. The global brands, including retailers and manufacturers are taking the necessary steps to drive a food safety culture; internally through looking at their own corporate culture, externally by working with their supply chain to improve transparency, effectiveness and efficiency and through their relationships with suppliers, including certification bodies.
That is good news for anyone involved in the food supply chain, in other words, all of us!
February 21- Day 15 LRQA Business Assurance Food Blog
Certification and Social Media – where is the link?
Those were two of the issues that WalMart’s Frank Yiannis’ highlighted in his closing speech on the final day of the GFSI Global Food Safety Conference. From a conference that featured a lot of fantastic presentations and sessions, Frank’s was definitely one of the highlights.
On certification, Frank let the audience know that the time was coming when certification would have to be present throughout the supply chain, right down to the farmers of the world. This statement was sure to leave some of the audience with serious cost concerns, “How much will that cost us?” “Who is going to pay for that?”
For the organisations in the room who have been through a food safety scare, experienced product recalls, lost market share, seen their share value plummet and then seen it all traced back to a small supplier at the very beginning of the chain, the questions were most likely very different ones; “Will this lead to restored stakeholder trust in our brand?” “How soon can we get started?”
On social media, Frank Yiannis talked about the increasing importance that social media holds for the food sector. He focused on the “real time” communications that social media is driving, alerting the world much quicker to potential food safety issues. He touched on blogs, email communication and search engine activity as tools that will, in the future, be a crucial part of crisis communications and procedures for the food sector. That sentiment was shared by many of the delegates, with a session on day three being dedicated to social media and food safety.
Now that the 700 + delegates have gone back to their offices around the world, we will see what really happens across the food sector. Will social media become a significant part of the way that food sector organisations monitor their potential risks and interact with their stakeholders? With consumers trusting independent voices over corporate voices, will bloggers and online media become more influential in the world of food safety and food sector brand reputation? Frank did mention that he was on Twitter, where you can also find the GFSI and LRQAFood. Visit twitter and type in food safety in the search bar. You will quickly see that the conversations are already happening.
Will 3rd party certification be driven through the entire supply chain by global retailers and manufacturers? The answer might already be there, in the form of the Global Food Safety Initiative and their efforts. The GFSI and its’ members have done outstanding work over the past few years, including the implementation of FSSC 22000 and the ongoing food safety standards harmonisation process. If the food sector achieves The GFSI slogan, “certified once, accepted everywhere”, it would be a milestone that the food sector could be proud of. And one that other sectors are sure to follow with great interest.
February 18- Day 14 LRQA Business Assurance Food Blog
A lot is happening on the final day of the Global Food Safety Conference in London
Cor Groenveld, LRQA’s global food safety expert, started the day with an interesting breakfast presentation this morning.
On the last day of the Global Food Safety Conference, a lot is happening. Cor Groenveld, LRQA’s global food safety expert, gave an interesting breakfast presentation this morning (at 7:45!). The turnout was good, with the room full. The Q and A session was lively, with time being our enemy, as we had to end the Q and A session to allow for the next meeting to get set up. After the presentation, we got our LRQA Food Round Table members together and had a quick recap chat about what has taken place here in London over the last three days. Cor was joined by John Roberts from our UK office, Anders Nilsson from our office in Sweden and Vel Pillay, our Americas food safety expert. Here is a recap of that discussion, starting with Cor’s thoughts:
Cor Groenveld
Today is the final day of the Global Food Safety Initiative Conference here in London and I must say it is the tenth conference and is one of the best I ever attended. There are several topics covered in this conference and one of them is the quality of the auditor. You can have the best management system in the world, you can have the best standards in the world, but when the quality and the integrity of the audit is not at the right level you have a problem. With LRQA we are investing a lot of time and money in the quality of our auditors. It starts with getting new auditors on board. If you look at food safety an auditor needs to have sector knowledge. You cannot use someone coming from university without working experience to do an audit. You also cannot use someone who worked his whole life in the bakery sector to do an audit in the meat industry. So the sector knowledge is one of the first key issues that we look at. The second one is then training in audit skills and audit experience. It can take up to three months within LRQA before an auditor can do audits on his own. We have a training programme where an auditor goes together with supervisors in the field to learn the job. The audit skills are very important. And last but not least, continuous development. We make sure that we have harmonisation sessions. We also make sure that we do reviews. We do monitoring of our auditors in the field and that is how we try to make sure that they are also developing continuously.
John Roberts
The learning points I have picked up from this conference from a UK perspective is particularly the momentum behind the FSSC22000 scheme. It is clear that the major manufacturers and even at this conference two retailers are promoting the scheme down their supply chain. In the UK there has always been the dilemma of the strength of the BRC scheme and it will be interesting to see how that develops in the future but from a global perspective and I am sure at some point that this will have an inference on the UK, the FSSC22000 schemes will gather strength, will gather pace and particularly with their development into the other sectors like packaging and animal food.
Vel Pillay
If I can just to add to that for me the part that I feel has been covered very well, it has been a learning experience as well as an eye opener is the food safety culture. I have learned what is a food safety culture, how to assess your food safety culture and I think this is going to be one of the most important areas. To me, GFSI has really raised the bar in this conference about food safety and we have also heard a lot from multinationals talking about the implementation process and integration of a food safety culture within their organisation.
Anders Nilsson
Yes, I think that is a good point. We have not been on a food safety conference I think it is important to remember that the consumer expects more than food safety. The consumer expects quality, environmental issues, social accountability all to be discussed and included. So we have to work for a combined approach where we integrate not only food safety but other aspects and help our clients to build a management system that supports the needs of the end consumer because that is what it is all about to get customers and clients that are satisfied.
As you can see, a lot was discussed over the last three days. The LRQA Food Round Table had a good conference. The role of certification and auditors was a central point of discussion throughout the event. We welcome those discussions, as we are an organisation who puts our people and their skills at the centre of what we are about and at the heart of our services that we deliver to our clients.
You can find out more about LRQA’s food month activities at www.food.lrqa.com
February 17- Day 13 LRQA Business Assurance Food Blog
Management Systems firmly on GFSI Conference Agenda
Two presentations from day two of the GFSI Global Food Safety Conference in London made it clear this morning that developing a food safety culture is directly tied to effective management systems. Professor Chris Griffiths from South Africa and Land O’ Lakes USA Vice-President, Sara Mortimore delivered excellent, engaging presentations that addressed food safety, culture and management systems. Chris Griffith stated, “Food Safety culture is fast emerging as global risk factor.” He went on to say, “Operational food safety performance is direclty linked to two things, 1) management systems and 2) culture.”
Sara Mortimore gave the best presentation that I seen so far, mixing humour, relevant case studies and facts to get several very important points across to the 700 plus delegates at the London Park Plaza Hotel. She started of with, “Corporate and national culture drive the food safety culture at any location.” She went on to talk about “A successful Food Safety culture will not happen by accident, it needs to be designed and nurtured.”
One of Sara Mortimore’s mini-case studies was the famous Peanut Corporation example out of the USA. Her conclusion was clear, organisations need to shift from a snapshot in time approach to managing their food safety management systems towards one that addresses processes and systems.
Mortimore also cited examples of local and national culture shaping the way organisational culture is interpreted in different locations. Examples from China, Japan, the USA, the UK and India provided the audience with a very interesting picture of local culture and food safety.
A final point from the Land O’ Lakes VP was that food safety incidents can negatively impact the image of the country of origin. The cases of melamine in milk and the impact that has had on consumer trust in food products from China and the fear of British meat after the BSE scare were used to back up her point.
Overall, her presentation was excellent, bringing the conference theme of developing a food safety culture to life.
The rest of today and tomorrow morning are set to deliver more highlights.
February 16- Day 12 LRQA Business Assurance Food Blog
Updates on the GFSI Technical Committee meetings, London
Cor Groenveld
Today is the first day of the Global Food Safety Initiative Conference. It’s the Food Safety Conference they organise every year. It’s the tenth time they have done it and this year it is in London. I have spent the last two days in meetings of the GFSI technical committees. One of the most important topics that we have been discussing is the extension of the GFSI scope. Traditionally GFSI only covered food products but now they also are extending their scope into packaging materials and animal feed. There are already two working groups initiated by the industry. Those groups are developing two public available specifications, (PAS documents) one describing the prerequisite programs for packaging materials and the other one for animal feed. This is a big step forward, as it will make ISO22000 available for more parts of the food supply chain. I think this is only the start, with PAS documents eventually being available for all the categories throughout the food supply chain.
Vel Pillay
I’m here in London attending the GFSI Conference. Today is day one of the conference. I have been here for the last two days attending technical meetings, which is very important for the GFSI Global Initiative. The technical meeting is where the issues of a global marketplace are being discussed. What we have realised is that GFSI has benchmarked twelve schemes and those twelve schemes are being implemented. However, there’s a need for emerging markets that is not being addressed. Therefore, one of the objectives of the technical committee was to develop our emerging market basic audit scheme program, specifically designed for suppliers that cannot actually perform the twelve approved GFSI schemes.
Cor Groenveld
Today at the conference there is the GFSI Stakeholder Meeting. It is the meeting where all stakeholders of the food supply chain are able to give input to GFSI, and GFSI uses that to improve their programs and to set future objectives. Catherine Francois, Director of the Global Food Safety Initiative Food Safety Programmes, said this morning that one of the key issues is auditor competence. And we at LRQA agree with that. When you look at the audit process one of the key elements is the integrity of the audit and therefore the competence of the auditor. I strongly believe that we have to work together, the different schemes have to work together, and certification bodies like us, we have to take responsibility to ensure that we have the right qualification process for auditors. LRQA is doing that, if you look at auditor competence, we are training our people at least for three months before they go into the audit and we make are committed to making sure that our assessors are up to date with the latest training and development programmes. Further training is built into their job, including in-house and external training on the latest schemes and standards.
Vel Pillay
One other area that all of the Certification Bodies have realised is that there is inconsistency in the audit process. At LRQA, at this moment in time we are actually conducting a lot of webinars for our assessors to ensure consistency in the process.
February 15 – Day 11 LRQA Business Assurance Food Blog
Asia addressing Food Safety, both in practice and in the media
Today’s food safety headline is China’s commitment to enhance their investigation of food safety incidents. The latest announcement is part of China’s efforts to convince Japan and other major importers of Chinese foodstuffs that they can trust China’s food supply chain. A recent announcement by the Chinese government that 248 people were arrested on food safety charges in 2010 is also part of China’s efforts at demonstrating toughness and transparency in relation to those who would attempt to undermine food safety laws.
Vietnam has said that they will increase their inspections of seafood processing operations in line with the recommendations of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.
In Taiwan, under the instruction of Premier Wu Den-yi, a cross-ministry “food-safety task force” has been established.
While it is too early to say what effect that will have for the countries in question, Asia as whole and the increasing number of global food organisations operating across Asia, it is clear that governments see the need to communicate the importance of food safety to consumers and business alike.
Day two of the GFSI London conference will focus on Asia, with China and Japan both hosting the below speaking slots.
03:10pm Achieving Safer Food through Collaboration
Ji Chao, Deputy Director General for the Department of Supervision on Food Production, AQSIQ – General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of the People’s Republic of ChinaCHE Wenyi, Deputy Chief Administrator of CNCA – Certification and Accreditation Administration of the People’s Republic of China
05:05pm Japan Food Communication Project – Changing Corporate Food Safety Culture to Build Consumer Trust
Yutaka Arai, Director of Food Industry Policy Division, General Food Policy Bureau, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Japan
With delegates from around the world in attendance, including the large majority of them doing business in Asia, the opinions and programmes being developed and implemented across Asia will be followed very closely throughout the three-day global food safety conference.
February 14 – Day 10 LRQA Business Assurance Food Blog
A who’s who in the Food Sector this week in London
This week’s Global Food Safety Conference in London will bring together the governments, food organisations of all sizes and other key stakeholders across the food sector.
Looking at the agenda, it is clear that food safety is still “top of the charts.” Cargill, Danone, Kraft and Kellogg are just some of the organisations taking to the podium on day one of three-day event. Government food agencies from the UK, USA, China and the UAE are all on the agenda as well.
A look at recent headlines indicates that the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) event (their 11th annual) is right on target with their “Food Safety Culture” theme. In a recent US survey, consumers put a price tag on food safety, indicating they would pay more for a small decrease in the likelihood of an incident in the food supply chain. Last week’s announcement that the US Republican’s latest budget would slash food safety budgets was met with widespread condemnation.
Barry Eisenberg, vice president of food safety services for the Washington, D.C.-based United Fresh Produce Association, recently addressed the importance of harmonisation among food audits, “The faster we move on audit harmonization, the easier it’s going to be for us to deal with the government, and the FDA is behind it.”
It’s not just the USA that is addressing food safety, with Bulgaria’s recent launch of a Food Standards Agency getting the support and attendance of the European Union.
We will be reporting live from the event on all three days (Feb.16-18), including interviews with some of the speakers and attendees. Hope to see you there!
February 11 – Day 9 LRQA Business Assurance Food Blog
Food Safety is now in the boardroom – right where it belongs
The title of today’s blog probably seems like an obvious fact to most of you in the food sector. But, back when I started in the food sector (a very long time ago!) that was not the case. As organisations increasingly treat risk management as a core principle of their business, food safety has become a topic that companies in the food supply chain address at the highest levels. When people join the GFSI Global Food Safety Conference next week in London, they will see the board members from some of the industry’s largest organisations. I looked at the programme, and it was clear that this event is on the sector’s radar. Director level speakers will be focusing on sustainability, CSR and other key risk areas for the food sector.
The main reason for that is if you are a CEO of a food company, of course you want to protect your brand, that’s one of the most important things you need to worry about. And board members want to sleep well at night. Senior management teams are proactively managing risks like food safety, sustainability, animal welfare and even things like child labour. Those are amongst the boardroom issues for food companies being monitored, discussed and managed. You do not want your name in the public space in connection with any of the above areas.
That leads me to why I will be in London next week. There is a huge drive within food companies to have robust management systems in place to support them in their goal of controlling these risks. In the past, it was the quality manager who was responsible for everything and when something was wrong it was his fault, but that system didn’t always solve the issues. It has become clear to the industry that senior management and CEO’s need to show commitment and they have to invest in people and systems. Equally important, they have to prove it. Organisations need to be transparent in their activities and independent assessment and certification is widely accepted by food sector stakeholders as the most trustworthy form of transparency. That transparency is what builds consumer trust, which leads to a stronger brand value. That trust is also what helps organisations survive when something does go wrong. People will give a company the benefit of the doubt if there is trust there to start with. If not, then one small mistake can be the beginning of the end.
February 10 – Day 8 LRQA Business Assurance Food Blog
Moving towards harmonisation
The recent food scares have led to a fundamental shift in the approach that organisations, governments and consumers are taking towards food safety. That change can only be good for all of us.
The biggest move we see in the food sector at the moment is that there’s a change from inspection audits and the product audits to a process based management system approach to auditing. What does that mean, you ask? Previously, auditing, be it 2nd or 3rd party, was an inspection, a “snapshot in time” of what a factory or organisation was doing at that exact moment (to be clear, that often meant how an organisation performed in front of an auditor that they knew was coming to visit them well in advance!). Fair to say the audit often told you how the company was doing on this Tuesday at 11:17 a.m., but could not really give you a clear picture of what was going on the next day, week or month. Instead of this, a process based management system audit reviews both the effectiveness of processes in the past and the capability of the system to meet the companies objectives and client requirements now and in the future. Next to having a good standard addressing these requirements, it is mainly the skills, knowledge and experience of the auditor that ensures the efficiency and effectiveness of the audit.
FSSC 22000 is a certification scheme that requires these process based management system audits. It is getting a lot of attention right now from global organisations looking to harmonise their food safety systems to ensure a more consistent, safer and transparent performance. The large manufacturers like Cargill, Danone, Kraft, Unilever, Nestlé etc. are already using it for their own processing activities. They are now beginning to stimulate their supply chain, and their vendors to use to apply FSSC 22000 in their organisations as well. The biggest difference with FSSC22000 (the scheme is based on ISO22000 and PAS220) and other standards is that it is based on a risk analysis model. It is not a set of prescriptive requirements but it asks a company to do a robust analysis of their hazards and risks. This is a positive development and fits the approach of food companies towards their food safety hazards. The transition we see is that companies are building integrated management systems. And an integrated management system means that they not only cover food safety but also other risk areas like sustainability and corporate responsibility.
ISO 22000 can help them do that, as there are a lot of very specific requirements in ISO22000 that give a company a tool to build their management system, including a robust analysis of risks and hazards and ensuring that continuous improvement is at the heart of what they are doing.
February 9 – Day 7 LRQA Business Assurance Food Blog
Food Safety – Making it Personal
As I get ready for next week’s GFSI conference in London, one of the key issues is going to be customised audits in the food supply chain. When you look at the current situation we have standalone audits, standalone certificates, the GFSI recognised standards like FSSC, Dutch HACCP, the BRC and host of others. Those third-party schemes and standards cover a lot of needs looking at food safety and the food safety management system in companies and also in their supply chain. But more and more companies are asking us to look at other risks and other areas. Companies have their own requirements and they have specific vendor requirements. We are working with organisations to integrate those requirements in our audits, resulting in a customised assessment process.
We have a lot of clients like Cargill and Mars that we can sit down with and identify risks, issues and potential concerns. Then we can develop a customised audit programme covering not only a third party certificate if they need it, but especially those concerns and risk areas that are important for them. Important here is that in developing such a programme, particularly for multi-nationals with sites around the globe, is that we can use the data coming from these audits to show them their strength and weaknesses. This benchmarking helps organisations to improve across their entire food supply chain.
In an age where information is king, customised audits are offering companies a window into their entire supply chain, helping them and their suppliers/retailers improve their performance and reduce their risk.
February 8 – Day 6 LRQA Business Assurance Food Blog
The Americas, making food safety priority one
Food safety remains a critical issue in the US, with 94% of Americans saying they are “very concerned” (57%) or “somewhat concerned” (37%).
Product recalls still abound as well. Last week we saw recalls on undeclared eggs in Ceasar’s salad, potential presence of Salmonella in Cilantro, undeclared almonds in ice cream and many more. According to the latest figures, 48 million Americans are affected by foodborne illnesses every year, over 100,000 are hospitalized and thousands are killed. Both the Government and the food sector have realized that proactive measures are required. We are seeing an increased effort by both the Government and industry to adopt sweeping changes aimed at preventive control. The emphasis is on strengthening accountability for prevention throughout the food supply chain
The enactment of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) in January 2011 is the first major legislative food safety reform in the US since 1938. Some of the highlights of the FSMA are:
• The focus on prevention – Registered facilities must identify hazards and put in place effective measures to control the hazards
• Food importers must ensure that the food they import is safe
• The new system will be based on applying good science and common sense that will prevent problems that can make people sick and this will involve FDA partnering with the public and private sector.
• FDA to establish offices in countries exporting food to the US
• FDA has the power to set nationwide standards and training
• FDA will recognize third party certification.
• FDA has been granted the power to recall
Industry is also proactively engaged in implementing preventive measures to identify, evaluate and control hazards. The food sector in North America has recognized the value of the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), a foundation that benchmarks existing food safety standards against established criteria. Most retailers and multinational food processors now require GFSI benchmarked schemes from their vendors. The multinationals are also implementing GFSI benchmarked schemes in their own facilities.
Finally, processors in North America have recognized the value of process based and management system assessment. The FSSC website (the owners of the global FSSC 22000 food safety management system certification scheme) listing certified companies comprises of companies like Kraft, Coca-Cola, Pepsi Cola, Mars, Cargill and others. Of the 210 companies listed as being certified to FSSC 22000, 26% are multinationals with headquarters in North America.
At LRQA, we are seeing an increase in the interest in and certification to FSSC 22000 in the Americas. As the importance and profile of food safety continues to increase in the USA, we anticipate the focus on FSSC will grow by leaps and bounds. LRQA anticipate a 3 fold increase the number of FSSC certificates to be issued in North America in 2011 as compared to 2010.
At LRQA we believe that checklist based audits are on the way out and that process based assessment is the future. Recognizing the food industry as a key area of strategic focus for us globally, we’ve invested to significantly grow our knowledge and resource base to better serve the industry and our clients. We have been conducting free webinars to demystify FSMS, have published white papers on process based approach and FSMS. Our website contains materials that can be downloaded and used by any company that is interested in implementing an FSMS.
Vel Pillay is the Food Safety Programme Manager for LRQA – the Americas. He has over 15 years of experience in the food sector managing both R&D and food safety. He has also worked for the FDA, Canada. Vel is a qualified Lead Assessor and trainer for FSSC 22000.
February 7 – Day 5 LRQA Business Assurance Food Blog
Question and Answer session from the latest LRQA Food Safety Webinar
For today’s post, I have chosen a few good questions from the Q&A session from the live webinar that I hosted last week. Follow this link to watch this webinar ‘Food safety in the supply chain – Where are we now?’ in full.
Q1: Will GFSI approve any standards for food packaging activities?There is now a development of a PAS document for packaging materials, and I know that at the upcoming Global Food Safety Conference in London, the GFSI will have a working group looking at expanding the scope of GFSI to other activities, which could include packaging. At the moment, GFSI covers food ingredients, food products, and primary production but there will be a working group also looking at for instance packaging materials and animal feed. So we see that the GFSI is now looking to expand their scope and then it could be possible that certification schemes for packaging materials can also get GFSI recognition. So I think that during the conference in February in London that will be very interesting to follow.
Q2: We have an IFS food standard and BRC but they have two certificates. When will those standards accept each other?The issue is mainly that we need the retailers to have mutual acceptance of the GFSI standards. So a number of retailers are doing that already but there is still work to do. And I think again that at the GFSI event in London this will be absolutely an important topic and I hope that we take a good step in the right direction to have mutual acceptance of it.
Q3: There are food safety concerns linked with the primary and secondary packaging.I hope that the PAS document for packaging materials will be published as soon as possible, they aim to have it ready mid year, 2011 but okay that’s a challenge. Then I think that the producers of packaging materials will start to use it and that will be a good step forward, specifically for this sector.
Q4: Are pet foods covered by current certification schemes?That is a very good question, there was a discussion I think only two years ago within ISO22000, and ISO22000 accepts pet food within the scope. That was the decision of the 22000 working group was that pet foods can be certified for ISO22000. The owners of the FSSC 22000 certification scheme also had a discussion on the board of stakeholders which resulted in FSSC also accepting pet food in their scope.
Q5: We are a catering company what can we do?Well if you are a catering company at the moment you can use ISO22000 because ISO22000 can be used by the whole supply chain, its from farm to fork, it includes even packaging materials, it even includes food service companies like cleaning companies, like pest control companies and also catering services. As I said there is now an initiative within ISO to develop a Prerequisite Programme (PRP) document, it is a work in progress, we want it already, and of course when that document will be published and FSSC will also use it in their certification scheme and then it’s also possible to have an FSSC approval. But you can already use ISO22000 catering service is within the scope, so that’s not a problem.
Q6: Up to what level of detail should we go with PAS220 requirements to comply with ISO22000, especially in developing countries?That is a very good question again. The diplomatic answer is: it depends. When you want to be certified against FSSC for instance that requires ISO22000 and PAS220, the answer is quite clear you just need to meet the “shall’s” in the PAS220. The shall’s are things you have to implement, so when you read a shall in that standard you have to meet it but there is an introduction in PAS220 and that is very helpful. The introduction says when any of the requirements in this document are not applicable or if you control one of the issues in another way that is still effective, that is acceptable as long as you can motivate it.
So it is possible to have an exception or a non applicable situation for one of the requirements but then you have to motivate for instance to an auditor why it’s not applicable or why you have controlled something in a different way. So there is flexibility in the PAS220, but in principle, also in developing country there is of course a minimum level of food safety and it doesn’t matter where product come from. Doesn’t matter if it comes from Netherlands, from the UK, from India or from Kenya there is a minimum level of food safety and we all need to meet it because products that are in the supermarket have to be safe, it doesn’t matter where they come from.
Q7: What is the difference between HACCP and ISO22000?Oh, that’s again a good question; in fact there are no bad questions of course. The principles of HACCP are developed by the Codex Alimentarius. The HACCP principles are a methodology to identify potential hazards, to see if those hazards are significant and those hazards have to be controlled by CCPs. In short, that is the HACCP principles from Codex. What ISO22000 has done, is that they took exactly the same principles of HACCP and they embedded them in a management system environment.
What does it mean?
Well if you look at the Codex principles you will not find any requirements on food safety policy or objectives, you will not find any requirement on continuous improvement, on using Deming Circles or on doing root course analysis for problems; all those management system requirements are in ISO22000. So, 22000 uses exactly the same principles of Codex HACCP but they embedded them in a management system environment. As a result, that makes of course HACCP a much stronger pull because we all know that the management system approach ensures that you are not only managing the hazards and risks very well but you also are working with continuous improvement and preventing things going wrong. So that’s in short the difference between HACCP and ISO22000.
Remember….
I will also be at the event in London (16th February – 18th February) which is one of the biggest global food safety conferences.
You can find out more about LRQA’s food month activities at www.food.lrqa.com
February 4 – Day 4 LRQA Business Assurance Food Blog
Food Safety in the Supply Chain – Where are we now?
Today’s blog is replaced by our Food Safety Webinar, back on Monday with the Q and A from the webinar. Next Tuesday, I will hand over to Vel Pillay, our food expert from the Americas.
February 3 – Day 3 LRQA Business Assurance Food Blog
2nd and final day from the European Food Manufacturing and Safety Forum
Today was the 2nd and final day of the The European Food Manufacturing and Safety Forum in Amsterdam. It was another very interesting day, with global organisations leading the majority of today’s presentations. I was fortunate enough to see the General Mills, Heinz and Nestle presentations, among others.
In relation to the work that LRQA is doing with one of our major clients, the Heinz one was of particular interest. They shared their Vendor Assurance Programme with the audience. For new suppliers, Heinz undertake the audits themselves, but for existing and lower risk suppliers, they rely on independent, 3rd party assurance providers (and use the GFSI schemes).
Nestle were talking about sustainability and quite interesting how they showed how they did an analysis on the packaging materials. They focused on the Greenhouse gas emissions from their packaging processes. A 5-year study has helped them better understand their most relevant emissions areas and enabled them to make slight modifications that have resulted in significant CO2 reductions. It was very interesting to hear that a large number of today’s presentations went well beyond the traditional food safety areas.
General Mills had a very interesting presentation on food safety and packaging material. The General Mills presentation showed how important it is not only to have food safety within the food manufacturers themselves but also in the materials they use like packaging materials. This relates directly to the work currently ongoing to extend the PAS 220 programme to include packaging materials, among others.
Clearly, today highlighted the fact that organisations are working harder than ever to get food safety right, not only within their own organisation, but throughout their complex supply chains.
I will also be at the event in London (16th February – 18th February) which is one of the biggest global food safety conferences. I also would like to invite you to my next webinar which is on 24th march 2011 and is titled, LRQA Webinar: An Update on FSSC 22000, so register for this now!
You can find out more about LRQA’s food month activities at www.food.lrqa.com
listen to my podcasts
February 2 – Day 2 LRQA Business Assurance Food Blog
Talking Food Safety with the Industry
I am in a food safety and manufacturing summit in Amsterdam today. In fact it’s not in Amsterdam itself but it’s in a very nice area close to the North Sea. It is a two day conference. The conference is being attended by a lot of quality food safety people. But also what we see is that there is a lot of interest from people from other areas of the food industry because the topics are not only food safety it’s also talking about the other concerns in the food supply chain like sustainability, corporate responsibility and this kind of things.
I must say that it’s quite impressive when you look at the list of food companies here. We have companies like Coke, we have Danone, we have Unilever, we have PepsiCo, we have Mars, we have Cargill, and I can go on and go on. There are I think more than 120 delegates at this conference and what is interesting is that we see a lot of good cases from the manufacturers themselves. Showing how they are addressing the hazard and risk in the food supply chain, they are showing the best practices. So it’s a very open discussion and it’s a big learning experience I think for all the different parties.
One of the presentations I saw today was from Unilever, it was the Head of the European Operations, and that was absolutely about efficiency in the supply chain. He talked about stock reductions, all kinds of tools that are used by Unilever. Again, it’s an example that the food supply chains are also really focusing on more effectiveness and efficiency as an important issue. Another one was Heinz, it was the Head of the Operational Risk Management for EMA, or Europe, Middle East and Africa, and he talked about sustainability. What’s interesting was he said when you want to work on sustainability, the first thing you have to do is ask yourself where do we want to go, where do we want to be as an organisation and also what is realistic, what is achievable. He said there is a lot of companies who just say yes we want to be carbon neutral, he said but perhaps that’s not achievable at least not on short notice. So make sure your objectives are realistic and achievable.
Another example was PepsiCo, PepsiCo also talked about sustainability. And as an example I found it very interesting, it was just a case study saying here you have a two litre packet of orange juice and it produces 1.7 kilograms of CO2 and 60% comes from the oranges, and most of it comes from production of fertilisers. And that shows very clearly that the food supply chain is now really analysing what is happening and analysing where they need to control risks in the supply chain.
I was privileged to do a presentation today as well. I had a full hour so that was quite a lot of time, so we had opportunity to have good discussions. What I mainly did was talk about food safety but also other concerns of the food supply chain and I was really mirroring the audience on how reliable is your food now. I showed them a number of very interesting figures you can find on different sources like the WHO, the World Health Organisation, but also the Centre of disease control in America. But those facts and figures show that we are doing a good job in controlling food safety and other concerns but we are absolutely not there yet. There are still a lot of food scares, still a lot of recalls, we still have quite a lot of problems in the food supply chain. And then I translated that to a solution with three main elements: 1) first of all, it is important to have a risk based management system, to identify the hazards and the risks and to find the right control measures. 2) The second bit is the supply chain approach, most of the food scares start in the beginning of the supply chain, so it’s important to make sure that there is a supply chain approach towards these concerns. 3) and finally, do not control only food safety in your management system, your management system can also cover other risk areas. Why have different systems in place when you can have one integrated management system to cover all of your concerns?
That led to a lot of discussions and good questions, one of which was about the acceptance from retailers when we talk about different standards in the food supply chain, and I showed that there is positive progress, more and more retailers accept all of the GFSI recognised standard, but we are still not there. Also, there were questions about the new standards in ISO. ISO has developed a number of standards in the 22000 series, and I explained what standards are being developed at the moment. And I showed the progress on FSSC22000, because there is accredited certification available, more and more food manufacturers are listed now on the website of FSSC as being certified.
February 1 – Day 1 LRQA Business Assurance Food Blog
In London, Amsterdam and around the world, February is Food Month
There are two very important food safety conferences this month, one in Amsterdam (31st January – 1st February) and the other one in London (16th February – 18th February). I will be presenting at both of the events for LRQA.
These two events highlight the fact that food safety is still the number one priority in the food supply chain. The people attending both events are the individuals responsible for food safety in organisations across the food supply chain. They are the ones who are working hard to minimise food safety hazards and risks in the supply chain. The European Food Manufacturing and Safety Forum in Amsterdam will also cover other risk areas, including sustainability and corporate responsibility. The nice thing is that when a food company has a solid and a robust management system it cannot only cover food safety issues but it can also cover other risk areas like environmental concerns and corporate responsibility. I think this conference is a unique platform where people from the whole food supply chain are able to network with each other, to learn from each other. So also for us, LRQA, it’s very important to meet those people and to make sure that we show them how we handle and cover these issues with our certification and audit services.
The London event is the biggest global food safety conference of the year. The GFSI, (www.mygfsi.com) Global Food Safety Initiative will be holding its 11th annual conference. They are expecting over 650 delegates from around the globe. The GFSI was initiated 11 years ago by the large retail organisations. At the moment GFSI is not only retailers it’s a big network of all kinds of stakeholders in the supply chain. So it involves retailers, manufacturers, certification bodies and accreditation bodies. The main thing they do, they benchmark certification schemes. They have a set of rules for certification schemes, called “the guidance document.” You can download them for free on their website. They have benchmarked a number of food safety certification schemes, and have given a number of those official GFSI approval, or recognition.
When the GFSI was launched, their slogan was ‘Certified Once Accepted Everywhere’, that meant that if a food company was certified against one of the recognised schemes then all the retailers would accept that certificate. And everyone thought ten years ago “yeah that’s great, that’s the start of harmonisation” but, unfortunately not all the retailers follow that principle.
More and more retailers, such as Wal-Mart, Carrefour and Metro in Germany are starting to recognise the GFSI standards across their food supply chain. A lot of retailers still choose to mandate one of the certification schemes. Longer term, I think that will change, as retailers begin to see the benefits of harmonisation. But as all of these things, it will take some time. Overall, the GFSI is doing a great job; they are a great networking organisation. They are driving the move towards harmonisation of global food safety standards.
The GFSI’s annual conference will be a great event again with all the stakeholders from the food supply chain in attendance. This year’s theme is “Developing a Food Safety Culture” and will once again feature lively, informative discussions, good meetings on how to further improve food safety in the supply chain and most importantly, how we can achieve harmonisation of certification, standards and audits.
If you are interested in either of my presentations, there is more information here on all of our food sector activities or send us an email at enquiries@lrqa.com and I will get back to you. I will also be hosting a food safety webinar on the 3rd of February.
So, with February being Food Safety Month, hope to see everyone at the Amsterdam and/or London event. Otherwise, we will be having a daily blog right here on lrqa.com for the next three weeks to keep everyone updated on the latest news and discussions around the food sector.
Cor Groenveld is the Global Product Manager for the food services of Lloyd’s Register Quality Assurance Ltd. (LRQA) . He has a degree in Food Technology and worked for 10 years in the food industry before joining LRQA. His background includes being a Quality Assurance Manager, working in product development and production as well as [...]
8th February 2011 at 1:00 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Lloyd's Register, Business Assurance. Business Assurance said: LRQA Business Assurance Food Safety Blog, February 2011: Today's blog post is from the webinar that I delivered … http://bit.ly/fDbuIv [...]
7th February 2012 at 3:16 pm
now that’s a detailed blog entry!!