If many new diseases are emerging today, it is because food safety has not been achieved. Good nutrition and healthy living are the most basic needs of people. Food-borne diseases have a very bad impact on human health both in developed and developing countries. Food hazards, especially in children, the elderly and pregnant women, have reached serious levels.
Efforts to ensure food safety ensure that food produced does not harm both consumers and the environment physically, biologically and chemically. Establishment of quality food production systems and ensuring food safety has become increasingly important in restaurants, patisseries, hotels and similar establishments that produce food. In this way food safety The aim of the program is to minimize the possible dangers, to find the causes of the errors detected and to find solutions to these errors.
Food safety studies are related to the determination of the risks arising from these foods at the time of consumption of the produced foods, that is, when they are used by the consumers. Risks that threaten food safety can arise at any stage in the food production chain. Therefore, all production stages of food need to be effectively controlled. In short, food safety is a phenomenon that covers all the rings in the food production chain.
Food safety refers to all measures taken to eliminate all kinds of biological, physical and chemical risks that may arise in food. Based on this definition, safe food, purposefully nutritional value and biological, physical and chemical microbiological properties can be defined as food suitable for consumption.
Consumers are in the last ring of the food chain. There are many regulatory authorities until a food reaches the consumer. These are product producing companies, feed producing companies, primary food producers, food manufacturers, secondary food manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, catering companies and food service operators. In addition to these, companies producing pesticides, fertilizers and veterinary medicines, companies producing food ingredients and additives, transport companies, cleaning and sanitation companies, packaging materials manufacturers and service providers can also be mentioned. All these are the food chain.
HACCP Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points System
It is essential for the consumers to ensure food safety and to produce high quality foods. If the need for nutrition is not met by safe foods, people will suffer from it. Studies that will ensure food safety will also affect the quality of food. Although the HACCP Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points System is primarily a food safety system, it is also a quality assurance system. HACCP standards are completely aimed at reducing the risk of food safety. The aim of this system is to determine the biological, chemical and physical critical points of danger starting from the raw material supply which is the first steps of food production, to control them and to ensure safe food production in this way.
The HACCP standard is based only on the production stage of food production. Therefore, it was applied only by food producing companies. Later, when the ISO 22000 Food Safety Management System standard prepared by the International Standards Organization was published, the HACCP standard lost its validity after the year 2006.
ISO 22000 Food Safety Management System
In order to prove that they comply with hygiene conditions during their activities, all companies that produce food and participate in any part of the food chain establish ISO 22000 standard which is an international standard.
Risks that threaten food safety are due to biological, chemical or physical contamination and a number of improper applications during production. For this reason, everyone involved in the food chain must fulfill their responsibility to ensure food safety.
ISO 22000 Food Safety Management System is an international standard and is designed to establish a safe food production chain worldwide. This system aims to ensure the communication between producer organizations, consumers, suppliers, legal authorities and other related organizations and thus to be monitored at every stage of food production. This system for ensuring food safety also includes HACCP principles.
What are Food Risks?
The prerequisite for safe food production is the provision of safe raw materials. The other condition is to produce and prepare them in healthy and hygienic environments and in enterprises with sufficient technical equipment in order to produce safe food. Food-related risks are grouped into three groups: biological, physical and chemical. Microbiological hazards are the leading food-borne health risks. These hazards are important at many stages of food production. Foodstuffs found in non-sterile environments naturally contain a large number of microorganisms. When this number exceeds certain limits, foodstuffs change and become unconsumable. Foodstuffs in this situation are risky for human health.
Physical hazards that threaten food safety arise from all kinds of foreign substances such as stones, soil, glass, metal, wood and similar substances that should not be present in foodstuffs.
Chemical hazards, on the other hand, arise from unintentionally or misused pesticide residues or chemicals from environmental sources, or from a number of hazardous substances used in food production to increase yield in crop production and animal husbandry. It is extremely important to control the proper use and application of all pesticides and additives in the prescribed doses.
In food production, there are hazards arising from raw materials, production methods and techniques or hygiene practices, as well as from the contamination of various foreign substances such as paints, machine oils and the like.
All these hazards need to be controlled during production, processing, storage, packaging, distribution and sales. All processes, from the production of food to the consumption, can be carried out in a healthy manner if a production system that is compatible with the quality of the food is established and it is prevented from harming human health.
Benefits of ISO 22000 Food Safety Management System Certificate
Food safety is related to the fact that it does not harm human health during the consumption of food. Such hazards can occur at any stage of the food production chain. It is only possible for all companies in the food chain to establish the ISO 22000 Food Safety Management System in their enterprises and to operate in compliance with the relevant standard. All businesses that have established and implemented ISO 22000 standard in this way they can request an ISO 22000 Certificate by applying to a certification body. Companies with this certificate prove that the food products they offer to consumers are produced in accordance with an internationally accepted standard.
ISO 22000 Food Safety Management System Certificate is issued and delivered to the company if it is seen that the company meets and fulfills the necessary conditions at the end of the audit studies to be performed by the certification body. For the validity and acceptance of this document, it is very important that the certification body is accredited by a national or international accreditation body.
Obtaining ISO 22000 Certificate provides many benefits to the companies in the food chain. Here are a few of them:
- Efficient and rapid control of possible risks
- Production errors are reduced because risk areas are already identified
- In this way, waste of time, labor and resources is avoided
- Reduces production costs
- Foodborne diseases are prevented
- The firm gains competitive power in domestic and international markets.
- Effective communication is established between suppliers, consumers, supervisors, distribution companies and all related parties in food production
- Legal regulations are complied with so that there is no problem in legal audits
Why Develop ISO 22000 Standard?
In order to ensure safe and healthy production in the companies operating in the food sector and on the food production chain, it is necessary to conduct risk analyzes, identify critical control points, manage processes for these processes and establish a quality management system. This can only be achieved thanks to the ISO 22000 Food Safety Management System standard. It is also a standard that must be applied in the global food trade and is a standard for safe food supply worldwide.
Because food products have a direct impact on human health, the safety of food products is an absolute demand of consumers who use them. Food producing companies have to take this responsibility as management. For these reasons, it is necessary to look at food safety with an absolute and unchanging quality feature.
Food producing companies are obliged to make production in compliance with hygiene and sanitation lines and to ensure that the food products they offer to consumers are safe. In all businesses on the food chain, management must establish the ISO 22000 Food Safety Management System, ensure the continuity of this system and support its operation.
In this sense, the ISO 22000 standard is an important opportunity for international food supply chain management and food safety.
2005 The ISO 22000 Food Safety Management System, which was published in September, was also prepared as an integrated system based on risk management in compliance with ISO 9001 Quality Management System and ISO 14001 Environmental Management System standards. Therefore, it can be easily integrated with these management systems.
Increasingly accelerating technological developments push companies to a rivalry competition and new changes are experienced every day in the economic race. On the other hand, the world's population is rising rapidly. Depending on the development of technology, environmental pollution creates completely different risks. Economic imbalances in income distribution among countries lead to nutritional problems. Producing safe food and inspections on this issue is becoming increasingly difficult.
On the other hand, consumers are becoming more aware, changing their eating habits and increasing their expectations. Therefore, food producing companies have to improve their product quality.
As in all other product and service producing sectors, the survival of the companies in the food sector depends on the production of the products according to the needs and expectations of the consumers. This can only be achieved through the implementation of food safety systems, which cover the processes in all production stages of the companies and aim to prevent the risks that may arise before they occur, and effectively supervise this situation by the authorized institutions.
Based on this need, the International Standards Organization (ISO) has prepared the ISO 22000 Food Safety Management System standard. The HACCP standard, which was previously applied separately in each country and has no international character, was included in the ISO 22000 standard, thus creating a worldwide accepted food standard.
our organization TÜRCERT Technical Control and Certification Inc., ISO 22000 Food Safety Management System certification studies, national and international accreditation organizations are based on the authorization.