Industrialists in the food chain continue to face increasing regulatory pressure to demonstrate that they are in control of the food safety of products placed on the market. At the same time, supermarkets are setting their food safety objectives by publishing standards that enable food chain companies to be certified for hygiene management (BRCGS, IFS, for example). Standards have also been developed to harmonize practices (ISO 22000, FSSC22000, EN 15593 standard specific to packaging). These standards all contain provisions concerning hazard and risk analysis, good hygiene practices and quality management provisions..
Today, the question arises of how to coordinate these standards around a common concern: the hygiene of foodstuffs and packaging. While the objectives of these standards converge, the rationale behind their development and approach may differ. To help food and packaging professionals more easily integrate the requirements of these standards, ACTIA and a group of experts from several technical centers (Adria développement, Critt Poitou-Charente, Critt Provence-Alpes-Cotes d'Azur, CTCPA, LNE) have designed a website to compare the various hygiene management standards (http://referentiel.actia-asso.eu/).
Through this tool, the authors have endeavored to meet the expectations of professionals, with a synthetic presentation of standards and reference systems, in the form of specific sheets, access to comparative tables and case studies. Descriptions of regulations, the Codex Alimentarius, standards and reference systems have been written by the authors themselves. This is not a word-for-word transcription, and the authors therefore urge readers and users to refer to all the texts of the regulations, standards and reference documents in question. The choice of standards (ISO 9001, NF EN 15593, ISO 22000, FSSC22000, ISO TS 22002-1, ISO TS 22002-4, BRC Food Safety, BRC Packaging, IFS) was dictated by their frequency of use and their strategic nature for players in the sector. The comparative tables which form the core of this guide, take up the general requirements of the standards studied through a specific grid made up of over 50 items divided into 6 chapters:
- Quality management;
- Good hygiene practices (GHP) ;
- Hazard analysis (HACCP) ;
- Production control ;
- Traceability / non-conformity ;
- Continuous improvement;
This guide is an invaluable dynamic decision-making tool in hygiene management approaches, as well as a day-to-day aid in grasping all these standards. The authors' work is never finished: the website is periodically updated with new standards and new versions of standards. Each time a standard or norm evolves, the old and new versions coexist in the comparison matrix, so you can see the changes by chapter.
.Update date: May 2019
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