Can a food safety certificate be achieved in just one room of a building?
Some of my company's locations are ISO 9001:2015 registered. One of those produces packaging (such as printed films and cartons) and asks if they can get food safety certification for just an addition they are building. The addition will have dock doors (so I can envision raw materials in, finished/wrapped product out without leaving the room); I was thinking they'd need hand wash and bathroom facilities as well, correct? I realize they will need a full food safety program (policy, HACCP, objectives, etc.), but am not sure what else they may need and if it is even possible/feasible to confine a F/S program/scope to one area, one group of associates, etc. We'll consider all the GFSI standards. Any thoughts?
Yes, absolutely if;
- Your inputs/outputs are insular to this room (employee hygiene/sanitation traffic, water and other utilities, etc.)
- Your FSM scope clearly defines the above constraints
- You have the proper regulatory approvals
Thank you for your response. Are you saying employees working in that room will have to enter/exit it w/o going through the rest of the building, and stay only there while working? We can plan on bathrooms (is that even required, or just hand washing?) in that room, but early thinking on this would have them leave to go to the existing break room in the facility for lunch, etc. (is that possible or no?). And for "water", we can have for bathrooms, hand washing, press roller washing, but any problem if it is connected to the overall building plumbing (as far as back flow testing/requirements)? Please keep in mind I manage many ISO 9001 sites, but have only dabbled in food safety in my position with this company.
Lastly, can you please be specific on "regulatory approvals" needed? Thank you so much!
Thank you for your response. Are you saying employees working in that room will have to enter/exit it w/o going through the rest of the building, and stay only there while working? We can plan on bathrooms (is that even required, or just hand washing?) in that room, but early thinking on this would have them leave to go to the existing break room in the facility for lunch, etc. (is that possible or no?). And for "water", we can have for bathrooms, hand washing, press roller washing, but any problem if it is connected to the overall building plumbing (as far as back flow testing/requirements)? Please keep in mind I manage many ISO 9001 sites, but have only dabbled in food safety in my position with this company.
Lastly, can you please be specific on "regulatory approvals" needed? Thank you so much!
Sorry, to clarify, If the scope of the certification is to keep that room insular from the rest of the facility, employee traffic will have to be mitigated, not excluded. That is with all inputs.
Pretend the SQF cert only applies to the entire company makinf that section the entire company - everything within a cert would aoply.
Thank you for the responses, very helpful! Gathering more info. I am told since we don't have shatterproof bulbs in the entire rest of the facility, that could be a problem (I suppose we can address with risk assessments), and also since we can produce a "similar product" in the facility-not expecting-to-be-GFSI, that also could be a problem. Some that I learn makes we wonder if doing the whole plant makes as much sense, but I will continue to study both the SQF and FSSC22000 standards. Thanks again.
It can be done but remember there will be some elements that will be factory wide eg pest control, waste disposal.
In places where I have seen this they often fall down on the processes which are outside of the 'clean room'. Raw material storage in the main warehouse which then goes into the clean room is often an issue as the main area may be fitted with contamination sources such as glass windows and is generally less clean.
Defining the scope needs careful consideration and should be product/process based and not by location. If somebody has never been to your site, they won't be able to understand something like products X & Y being made in unit B, excluding products made in units A & C.
When it works, it can work well.
Thank you for the responses, very helpful! Gathering more info. I am told since we don't have shatterproof bulbs in the entire rest of the facility, that could be a problem (I suppose we can address with risk assessments), and also since we can produce a "similar product" in the facility-not expecting-to-be-GFSI, that also could be a problem. Some that I learn makes we wonder if doing the whole plant makes as much sense, but I will continue to study both the SQF and FSSC22000 standards. Thanks again.
You can get shatterproof covers for your fixtures. It is cheaper than switching out the whole ballast. Have you looked at any of those?
Cheers!
If your facility has moved to the low energy LED tubes, they are likely to be shatterproof anyway.
Changing lights en masse just so that everything is unbreakable has never made any sense to me. The most likely time that you will break a light is when you take it out to change it, so doing them all together just increases the risk.