New food safety certification FSSC 22000 scheme to be launched

[Sidney Vianna]

FSSC 22000 is a new food safety certification scheme about to be launched. FSSC 22000 is specifically targeted at food manufacturers and is built upon the well known ISO 22000 standard.

FSSC 22000 is based on ISO 22000, PAS 220 and ISO TS 22003. The Foundation for Food Safety Certification, supported by the Confederation of the Food and Drink Industries of the European Union (CIAA), has taken ownership of the new certification scheme and submitted it to the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) to be benchmarked and approved.
The new scheme is expected to be formally released in May this year, while the certification requirements are already available.

Targeted at food makers
Certification according to this scheme will be accredited under the standard ISO guide 65 (process certification), and will be limited to food manufacturers because the PAS 220 only covers the prerequisite programmes for food making.
Manufacturers that are already certified against ISO 22000 will only need an additional review against the PAS 220 to meet the new food safety standard FSSC 22000.
In the short term the foundation will launch the website www.fssc22000.com where the scheme documents and further information can be found.

Why a new certification scheme?
When the ISO 22000 standard was published, the food industry recognised its powerful potential to harmonise the food safety management systems based on the HACCP concept. However, doubts arose about its capability to meet the needs of all parts in the food supply chain, specifically the retailers.
GFSI performed an informal gap analysis benchmark on the ISO 22000 standard to compare it with the other widely accepted food safety standards such as BRC, IFS, SQF and Dutch HACCP.
A problem according to the GFSI criteria is that ISO 22000, being a management system standard, is “too generic” when it comes to prerequisite programmes and that a certification scheme owner was missing.

From ISO 22000 to PAS 220 to FSSC 22000
Sponsored by Danone, Kraft, Nestlè, Unilever and CIAA, the Publicly Available Specification PAS 220 has been developed to specify requirements for prerequisite programmes to assist in controlling food safety standards within the manufacturing processes of the food supply chain.
The next step was to bring these two standards together resulting in the new FSSC 22000 food safety management system certification scheme.
Read more about our services for food safety at DNV's food safety pages.