Traceability certification for the individual company and for the integrated food chain makes the company or supply chain processes more visible and reliable, allowing you to communicate a message of trust and for each company to assume the appropriate accountability.
Purpose
The first issue involving the food industry, which is a basic tool to manage any other issue, is traceability. An effective (and efficient) tracing and tracking system is needed to face food safety crises and to guarantee the product identity, which in turn is the basic tool to guarantee any quality claim and to control the supply chain.
A safe food product is the result of all processes and handling activities carried out through the entire food chain. Product identification requires a secure product identification system, and reliable retrieval of related product information. In the case of an incident, an efficient, fast and precise withdrawal or recall system is needed.
Food chain traceability certification supports all the aspects of the supply chain and takes in the activities of all the production companies involved in bringing a food product from farm to fork. This process requires detailed tracking reports of raw materials, it confirms the accountability of all parties involved in the process and proves that you have applied a management system.
Traceability is a key item both in food legislation (e.g. E.U. Reg. 178/2002) and in food safety voluntary standards (e.g. ISO 22000).
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) provides this technical standard to enable a harmonised approach to traceability systems in accordance with the available best practices (ISO 22005).
Benefits
The standards provide a framework to establish an effective and flexible traceability system to meet different objectives, such as:
To support food safety or quality objectives
To document the history or origin of the product,
To facilitate the withdrawal and/or recall of products,
To identify the responsible parties in the feed and food chain,
To facilitate the verification of specific information about the product,
To communicate information to relevant stakeholders and consumers.
Read on for information about the ISO 22005.