Food Safety

Food Safety is a major international and national concern. Many avenues and initiatives have been launched through the years to propose, implement and sometimes impose safety regulations or standards. Among them HACCP for food safety and the US FDA Food Code and the international Codex Alimentarius for Food Hygiene. Both the FDA Food Code and the Codex Alimentarius also provide guideline on how to implement HACCP in a generic fashion. Various USDA and FDA regulations have addressed Food Safety practices and HACCP for some specific high risk food products like Meat and Poultry, Fish and Fishery Products, and Juices. ISO 22000:2009, the international standard, has now integrated all aspects in a food safety management system (FSMS), compatible with ISO 9001.

The bottom line for any organisation lies in the following:

-Having first an effective Food Hygiene program in place,

-Managing food safety aspects through an adapted HACCP Plan,

-Processing and producing products that are safe for human consumption,

What are the key ingredients for this to happen:

A strong and uncompromising commitment from top management to ensure safe food products are being produced at all stages of production from sourcing to consumption.
Flowing down this commitment to the rest of the organisation, by providing an adapted food hygiene and food safety management system (procedures, SOPs, resources).
Ensuring total buy-in, awareness, and compliance by all employees through systematic and comprehensive training.
Continually monitoring the FSMS to improve it and maintain it current practice-wise and training-wise for employees. The saying "if you are not moving forward, you are moving backwards" cannot be more true for food safety management!

CALISO offers some resources to help you in your food hygiene and safety programs:

Link to the online course on Human Food GMP

Link to the online course on ISO 22000 the safety management system standard.

Link to the online course on Meat and Poultry HACCP and 9CFR417

Link to the online course on Seafood HACCP and 21CFR123