ISO/TS 22004:2005(E)

Food safety management systems — Guidance on the application of ISO 22000:2005

ISO/TS 22004 was prepared by Technical Committee ISO/TC 34, Food products.

General

The adoption of a food safety management system by an organization involved in the food chain is a useful tool for ensuring compliance with requirements specified by law, statute, regulation and/or customers.

The design and implementation of an organization's food safety management system are influenced by varying factors, in particular food safety hazards, the products provided, the processes employed and the size and structure of the organization. This Technical Specification gives guidance on the use of ISO 22000, which is based on the principles of HACCP as described by the Codex Alimentarius Commission and is designed to be applied together with relevant standards published by that organization.

Food chain and process approach

ISO 22000 promotes the adoption of a food chain approach when developing, implementing and improving the effectiveness and efficiency of a food safety management system. In this regard, in ISO 22000 the organization is required to consider the effects of the food chain prior to and subsequent to its operations when developing and implementing the food safety management system.

For an organization to function effectively and efficiently, it has to identify and manage numerous linked activities. An activity using resources, and managed in order to enable the transformation of inputs into outputs, is considered as a process. Often the output from one process directly forms the input to the next.

The application of a system of processes within an organization, together with the identification of interactions and the management of these processes can be referred to as the “process approach.”

An advantage of the process approach is the ongoing control that it provides over the linkage between the individual processes within the system of processes, as well as their combination and interaction. When used within a food safety management system, such an approach emphasizes the importance of
a) understanding and fulfilling the requirements,
b) the need to consider processes in terms of food safety and traceability,
c) obtaining results of process performance and effectiveness, and
d) continual improvement of processes based on objective measurement.

Interested parties play a significant role in defining requirements as inputs. Monitoring the satisfaction of interested parties requires evaluation of information relating to their perception of whether the organization has met their requirements or not.

The model of a process-based food safety management system shown in Figure 1 illustrates the process linkages presented in Clauses 4 to 8 of ISO 22000:2005. The model shown in Figure 1 does not show the processes at a detailed level.

Figure 1 — Concept of continuous improvement