Food safety certification

"Food safety certification" is three different things that buyers routinely treat as one. The first is the legal condition for putting a product on sale in a given market, which the destination sets and which is usually registration, a health or free-sale certificate and compliant labelling rather than a certificate anyone sells. The second is a voluntary management-system certificate covering the site, ISO 22000, FSSC 22000, BRCGS, IFS or SQF, which no government requires and most large retailers and importers do. The third is a scheme-specific product mark such as halal, kosher or organic, with its own audit and its own recognition rules. Which of the three applies depends on who asked: a customs authority, a customer, or a consumer reading the label.

Who asked for it, a regulator or a customer?

That one question resolves most of the confusion. A regulator asks for the conditions under which goods may legally enter a market, and those are set by the destination: establishment or product registration, a health or free-sale certificate from the authority in the country of origin, and labelling in the required language. A customer asks for assurance about the site that made the goods, and what they mean is a management-system certificate. The two are assessed by different bodies, against different evidence, and neither substitutes for the other.

The expensive version of the mistake runs like this: an exporter is told to get "food safety certification", commissions a full site audit against a retailer scheme, and then finds at the border that the destination wanted a facility registration nobody mentioned. The mirror image costs a contract rather than a shipment, fully registered and legally able to import, then rejected by the retailer for holding no scheme certificate. Establish which of the three was meant before anything is commissioned, because none of them is refundable and none of them converts into another.

What does the destination market legally require?

The legal layer differs per destination and is often not called certification at all. In the European Union, Regulation (EC) 178/2002 sets general food law and traceability duties and Regulation (EC) 852/2004 requires every food business to operate procedures based on HACCP principles. Neither issues a certificate. Compliance is shown to an inspector through records, and for products of animal origin through an establishment listing and a health certificate.

The United States runs on FSMA: FDA facility registration, prior notice of each shipment, and preventive controls with a qualified individual named for them. The Eurasian Economic Union works through TR CU 021/2011, where most food is declared rather than certified, with state registration required for specialised categories such as infant and dietary products. The Gulf states apply GSO standards through the national conformity schemes of each GCC member, with Arabic labelling. Brazil splits food between ANVISA registration and simple notification depending on category. Product conformity and market entry for food and drink takes these routes market by market.

Which certificate is your buyer actually asking for?

Almost always a management-system certificate covering the site rather than the product. HACCP itself is a method, published by Codex Alimentarius as a code of practice rather than as a mark, so a "HACCP certificate" is a voluntary attestation that a third party has looked at a system the law already expected you to run. Above it sit ISO 22000 and the GFSI-benchmarked schemes that large retailers actually accept: FSSC 22000, BRCGS, IFS and SQF. Plain ISO 22000 is not GFSI-benchmarked, which regularly surprises companies that hold it.

Read the supply agreement rather than guessing. Buyers name the scheme, frequently the grade they will accept, and sometimes the issuing body, and an audit against the wrong scheme does not convert into the right one. The management-system route sets out what each scheme audits, how they relate, and what a site has to have in place before the first audit is worth booking.

Where do halal, kosher and organic fit?

They form a third category: product-and-process schemes attached to a claim rather than to general food safety. Their audits look at ingredients, slaughter or handling, segregation and cleaning, and they are issued by bodies whose standing is decided by the destination rather than by the certifier. In several Gulf markets halal is also a legal condition for meat, poultry and products containing animal derivatives, which puts it in the first category and the third at the same time.

Recognition is the trap. A valid certificate from a body the destination does not list is worth nothing there, the audit is not transferable, and the second attempt costs what the first one did. Confirm which bodies the destination currently recognises before commissioning anything. Halal certification covers the scheme and those recognition lists; organic behaves the same way, through equivalence arrangements between national organic regimes rather than through one global mark.

What you were asked for, and what it actually is

The same three words mean a border condition in one email and a retailer audit in the next. Before anything is commissioned, ask the person who asked for it which document they expect to receive and which body they expect to have issued it.