ISO 22000 is the International Food Safety Management Standard.

It combines and supplements the core elements of ISO 9001 and HACCP to provide an effective framework for the development, implementation and continual improvement of a Food Safety Management System (FSMS).

ISO 22000 aligns with other management systems, such as ISO 9001 and ISO 14001, to enable effective systems integration.

ISO 22000 can be used by any organization directly or indirectly involved in the food chain including:
1. Farms, fisheries and dairies
2. Processors of meats, fish and feed
3. Manufacturers of bread and cereals, beverages, canned and frozen food
4. Food service providers such as restaurants, fast food chains, hospitals and hotels and mobile caterers

5. Supporting services including food storage and distribution and suppliers of food processing equipment, additives, raw materials, cleaning and sanitizing products, and packaging

1. Customer satisfaction - through delivery of products that consistently meet customer requirements including quality, safety and legality.
2. Reduced operating costs - through continual improvement of processes and resulting operational efficiencies.
3. Operational efficiencies - by integrating pre-requisite programs (PRP’s & OPRP’s), HACCP with the Plan-Do-Check-Act philosophies of ISO 9001 to increase the effectiveness of the Food Safety Management System.
4. Improved stakeholder relationships - including staff, customers and suppliers.
5. Legal compliance - by understanding how statutory and regulatory requirements impact the organization and its customers and testing compliance through internal audits and management reviews.
6. Improved risk management - through greater consistency and traceability of product.
7. Proven business credentials - through independent verification against recognized standards.
8. Ability to win more business - particularly where procurement specifications require certification as a condition to supply.

No. Not necessarily. Any Organization in the food chain from feed producers to being served to the consumers can get certified to ISO 22000. These include feed producers, food producers, food packers, food distributors, food retail and restaurants.

The latest version of ISO 22000 is ISO 22000:2005.

Upon successful completion of the ISO documentation audit and ISO Implementation audit, the certification body issues the ISO 22000 certificate for 3 years. After certification, there will be a surveillance audit each at the end of the first and second years. The next year will be the Re-certification audit.7

Yes. ISO 22000 Certification can be obtained irrespective of the size of an organization starting from 2 to thousands of people. Let your industry be a tiny, micro, small scale, medium scale, large scale or a very large scale. The same clauses apply. The only difference is that for an organization of lesser size, the implementation can be quicker and easier than that of a large sized organization.