Hey Charles,
thank you for the links they contain good info.
In Cyprus and Greece, most of the small companies, if not all are certified with iso 22000, so you will see it everywhere :). Regarding my question, it involves only local distribution of frozen products shipped from countries within the EU. So, in my report i documented the receiving, the storage and the delivery/distribution temperatures which all are OPRPs. So, i wrote that the cold chain is being verified as the auditee does monitor/log the temperatures. However, i got this comment from the certification body that in order for the cold chain to be verified, you will need to ask them to perform a microbiological analysis of a sensitive product, such as meat, at the distribution stage, and compare the results with the manufacturer/supplier's microbiological analysis of that batch.
it does make sense, however there is not such requirement as far as i know, not even by the law such as 853/2004. The only literature i found on this matter was by the british, FSA, where it says in the meat industry, microbiological analysis may help in verifying the cold chain, but it was never mentioned as a requirement.
best regards
Louis
Hi Louis,
Thks reply. So I guess this basically is an S&D Standard.
I'm primarily involved with Manufacturing so not particularly familiar with the implementation of iso22000 in respect to S&D however, personally, I would have guessed that the micro. analysis of some products is a logical part of Verification activities relating to PRPs involved in establishment/maintenance of the Cold Chain and the Performance of the System
I anticipate it could relate to Sections 8.8 (eg 8.8.1.a), 9 (eg 9.1.2), and others like Management Review (eg 9.3.2.c.3)
Such a micro. analysis is a typical verification activity within a haccp plan for Manufacturing food and is usually carried out (for Manufacturing) by simply testing (eg annually) a few "representative" samples to demonstrate that the results agree with the micro. specification for the particular food involved.
You might consider that verifying the adequacy of actual achieved temperatures is a fundamental Physical objective of the Operational System while the micro data verifies the (maintained) Biological condition of the Product.
I agree with caveats in Post 2 but you may well find that some documented micro. data is a routine auditorial expectation.
PS - I'm rather surprised at yr comment regarding OPRPs (eg Receiving/Cold Stores are usually PRPs IMEX) but that is another story.