Outcome of the ISO 22000 meeting in Ottawa

Outcome of the ISO 22000 meeting in Ottawa

The 2 main topics addressed and progressed during the ISO 22000 meeting held in Ottawa from 16th to 20th of September are the ISO 22002 series common structure and wording, and the reorientation of the ISO 22003 revision process and work program for integrating the future part 2 complementary to ISO 17065.

Dr Didier Blanc, ViaSyst president participated actively to these 2 projects.

Regarding the ISO 22002 series, the working group came to the following conclusions and proposed way forward:

• the most adequate structure for the series would be a core document with the harmonized structure (aligned on clause 8.2.4 of ISO 22000) and common text for all food chain categories, supplemented by independent documents for category(ies) specific requirements;
• this structure would allow each category specific document to be developed or revised separately, as necessary;
• however, in order to ensure consistency, all category specific documents will be developed within the same core working group, extended to category experts as necessary;
• the series will be extended to retail;
• the fist working document drafted in March has been adjusted and amended to fit in the retained structure and will be circulated for comments within the experts;
• the actual revision process will start during the next meeting that will be hosted by Cargill from 4 to 6 March 2020.

On the ISO 22003 side, the main outcomes of another 2 days meeting have been:

• the working group has been extended for integrating representative of food safety schemes accredited under ISO 17065, such as BRC, IFS & CanadaGAP (GFSI also was attending as this new situation will impact on their benchmarking requirements);
• the work plan has been reviewed for allowing the future ISO 22003-2 to be drafted, commented and published in parallel with ISO 22003-1;
• this means that the next stage on ISO 22003-1 (DIS publication) will be delayed so that part 2 can catch up;
• beside aligning the timelines, the other essential condition for ensuring consistency between both parts 1 et 2 is that both shall be developed by the same working groups, which has been decided;
• the working group also confirmed that ISO 22003 will now go for an international standard status, i.e. no more just a technical specification (TS);
• the 2 next meetings (February 4 to 6 2020 in Geneva and May 2020) will be entirely dedicated to developing the first draft stages of the future ISO 22003-2.

We will keep you informed of the further developments of these 2 major projects early 2020.

Dr Didier Blanc, ViaSyst President