Building and maintaining a transparent supply chain is necessary to maintain the integrity of products.

A solid supply chain is crucial to ensuring businesses can minimize and efficiently manage potential risks such as contamination, mislabelling, or recalls. End-to-end visibility is vital for organizational control, improved production efficiency, reduced costs, and better sustainability. It’s also central to building reputational trust.

Despite all this, the fragmented nature of modern supply chains often makes this challenging.

A lack of traceability in the food supply chain causes gaps in safety that can expose your business, and consumers, to unnecessary risk. The consequences can be severe: an outbreak of accidental foodborne illness can mean significant financial losses, permanent reputation damage, and even business failure.

But more than this, unsafe food threatens human health and life. An estimated 600 million people in the world fall ill every year after eating contaminated food and 420,000 die as a result. As networks continue to expand and extend across international borders, the human and economic cost of a fragile food supply chain simply cannot be ignored.

Irrespective of their size or complexity, every organization in the food chain has a responsibility to strengthen its traceability systems and deliver safe products to consumers. International standards can help reduce exposure to risk and improve performance, ensuring compliance to guidelines and regulations across the whole chain.

Key standards for supply chain resilience in the food sector

Of the hundreds of food-related ISO standards, the BS EN ISO 22000 series deals directly with food safety in the supply chain. It combines communication, system management, and hazard control to help remove potential weak links in the chain.

Through the development of an effective food safety management system (FSMS) that promotes harmonized working procedures, food safety is improved, communications are streamlined and the risk of any errors or misunderstanding is reduced. Certification also demonstrates compliance, increasing customer and stakeholder confidence in your organization’s ability to supply safe products consistently.

What’s more, BS EN ISO 22000 is closely aligned with the requirements of BS EN ISO 9001 for quality management. Integrating the two offers additional benefits, introducing a culture of continual improvement.

To read more about the key standards for food production, click here.

Beyond this, PD ISO/TS 22003 defines the rules applicable for FSMS audit and certification. Developed for use by the certification bodies who audit food safety management systems, its use further ensures that the food consumers enjoy is safe.

Meanwhile, BS EN ISO 22005 establishes principles and requirements for the design and implementation of a food traceability system. This helps maintain visibility during food manufacturing, processing, distribution, and handling–from production to consumption. Such a system also aids product recall or withdrawal processes.

Food safety hazards are present at every stage of the food production chain, which makes rigorous control efforts all the more important. Outside of the BS EN ISO 22000 series, companies should look to BS EN ISO 28000, which specifies the requirements for a security management system to ensure safety across the chain. You can use BS EN ISO 28000 to build pre-planned risk responses to help mitigate the impact of certain scenarios should they arise improving the resilience of your supply chain.

To further boost food security and defend your products from specific and deliberate attacks such as extortion, cybercrime, and economically motivated adulteration, your business can use PAS 96. This specification provides practical guidance on how to avoid and mitigate threats using a risk management methodology known as Threat Assessment Critical Control Points (TACCP). It further demonstrates a solid commitment to food safety, strengthening your brand’s integrity and increasing customer loyalty.

Meanwhile, PAS 7000 has been developed in response to clients around the world requesting a universal standard that would combine supplier profiles, capabilities, and performance to make informed decisions about whether or not to engage with a potential supply chain partner.

Safety and security will always be of utmost importance in the global food supply, and every party has its own responsibilities. As supply chains increase in complexity and size, a standards-based approach is the best way to intelligently manage and improve traceability, building a protected network of confidence and trust.

To ensure resilience in your food supply chain, add these management standards to your collection today.

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Want to access and manage the standards you need to support your food supply chain - all in one place? With a BSI Knowledge subscription, you will have the flexibility and visibility to manage the essential standards you need to work confidently and optimize your supply chain. Build your own custom collection of standards, or opt for access to our GBM37 Food Technology module and keep up-to-date with any relevant changes to your standards strategy. Request to learn more.