ISO 22000: 2018 - Its background

In this post I am analysing some background of food safety management systems, and why this issue has become so important for public health in practically every country in the world.

Until a few decades ago, the main food safety practices that were used in some countries, but not all, were to wash fruits and vegetables before consuming them, and to cook meat products. 

Every year there was a high mortality due to poisoning or food-borne illnesses, and intestinal problems with colic and diarrhea were an everyday thing in various regions of the planet.

Currently, food safety is recognized as part of public health programs in all countries, in which regulatory schemes have been generated, increasingly restrictive, to protect the health of food consumers, and practically every day the health authorities of all countries establish guidelines on substances used as pesticides or veterinary drugs, as well as their maximum permissible residues, to notify the whole world, through the Committee on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS Committee) of the World Trade Organization, in order to ensure the implementation of the SPS Agreement, that is, only safe food enters their national markets.

It is impressive how many people around the world work in relation to safety schemes. Many of them as representatives of the health authorities at the local, state, or national level for each country, and many more working in food producing organizations, in order to comply with these sanitary restrictions, so that they can sell their products in the different markets that are within their reach, whether at the local, state, national level, or export to one or more countries.

At the organizational level there is a technical scheme to be able to produce safe food, which is called HACCP, acronym for "Hazard analysis and critical control points". This system should be being applied to perfection by all food producing units throughout the world. However, this has not been achieved yet.

Fortunately, there are many people who have really understood and specialized in the application of this scheme, but, from what I have been able to know, there are many more people who feel like specialists in this subject, but who do not even understand the most basic concepts of this famous HACCP or HACCP system, and that is a serious problem, when these people are the ones who make decisions in organizations, or on behalf of health authorities.

I think it is to know that this regulatory scheme, HACCP, which has become so important for all humanity, was only developed in the sixties of the last century, but curiously not so that it could be used by each productive unit of food in the world, as it is practically being used now, but with the aim that astronauts who traveled to space would not get sick from the food they consumed on their journeys. That's right, this scheme was developed in partnership of a North American food company, Pillsbury, the United States Army and the United States Aeronautical and Space Administration. (NASA) as a collaborative development for the production of safe food for the space program. NASA wanted the "Zero Defects" program to ensure the safety of the food astronauts would eat in space. Therefore, Pillsbury introduced and adopted HACCP as the system that could provide the greatest safety, while in parallel, reducing the dependency on final product inspections and tests.

Regardless of the success of NASA's space program, the Pillsbury company presented the concept of HACCP publicly at a food protection conference in 1971.

The use of HACCP principles in promulgating regulations for low acid canned foods was completed in 1974 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (FDA). In the early 1980s, the HACCP approach was adopted by other large companies.

Recognizing the importance of HACCP for food control, the Codex Alimentarius Commission, in 1993 adopted the Guidelines for the application of the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) system, and subsequently, in June 1997, published it as annex to the recently revised document, "International Code of Recommended Practice - General Principles of Food Hygiene".

From there, the use of this system began as a requirement of health authorities in a large number of countries, for certain types of food. And so we come to these days, in which this system is required worldwide. However, this system has some interesting features. At the time it was published by the Codex Alimentarius Commission, which is a governmental organization, sponsored and coordinated by FAO and WHO, different health authorities worldwide were able to use it as a regulatory element in their corresponding countries. However, these health authorities in many countries did not always technically understand this type of system, and their approach was as a relatively simple method of controlling food production.

Unfortunately, many managers of food safety programs in food producing organizations that are applying this safety management system are doing it equally poorly as a simple method of controlling food production through documents and records.

I think that we have lacked, at a global level, training the people responsible for these types of programs. We must start by always considering that a food safety management system must be established in a multidisciplinary way. It is very common for us to focus on the knowledge base according to our professional training, that is normal. However, if you have been educated and trained as a microbiologist, which is a very important discipline in safety programs, the first thing we should think about is that you are not an expert in safety, but in microbiology. Likewise, if you are an epidemiologist, or industrial engineer, nutritionist, or have training in any other discipline that conforms to the basic knowledge necessary for a safety scheme, it is important to use that knowledge, mainly when good practices are being established, whether in primary production, manufacturing and standard operational sanitation procedures, as well as when the hazard analysis is carried out and the food safety plan or HACCP Plan is developed for an organization or food producing unit.

However, this multidisciplinary scheme must be complemented with deep knowledge of what a management system is, which is something that generally organizations fail.

The elements of management support are very important for a management system like this to work. Strategic planning, management skills, generation and control of documented information, process control, identification, documentation and analysis of non-conformities, planning, operation and evaluation of corrective actions, supervision, verifications, internal audits, among others, are essential for those systems work effective and efficiently.

This is one of the values ​​of the ISO 22000 standard. As a result of the experience that had been had with the ISO 9001 standard of quality management systems, and with the support of the HACCP system, a standard was developed that establishes requirements clear on how to manage a food safety system, something that the HACCP system by itself is not able to establish clearly. Similarly, the ISO 22000 standard concedes the necessary importance to the establishment and control of good manufacturing practices, as well as to sanitation standard operational procedures, in its main production processes related to food, which identifies them, as Prerequisite programmes (PRPs).

However, many organizations prefer to rely solely on their understanding of HACCP, as this is the basis for government regulatory restrictions. But under these conditions, if the organization does not have experience in the operation of a management system, it will be very difficult to properly comply with this system. And the same is going to happen to the health authority that has to verify these systems. If they have no knowledge of a management system, they are going to create a lot of confusion and make the wrong decisions regarding the safety of the food in their care.

 

Author:

Ernesto Palomares Hilton