16 replies to this topic

[Sankara narayanan]

My name is A Sankara Narayanan. Even though I am from India, presently I am located in Ghana. I have passed the lead auditor training course for ISO 9001:2000 held in October'06 conducted by SGS, in Accra .

In the present organization we are involved with the production of food additive, a natural sweetener. I am involved in the implementation of ISO 22000:2005. It has been an experience. We are expecting the certification audit in Feb'07.

Your forums have been helpful in throwing light to many of the factors about which we were unaware, especially as we are doing the entire thing on our own.

[Simon]

My name is A Sankara Narayanan. Even though I am from India, presently I am located in Ghana. I have passed the lead auditor training course for ISO 9001:2000 held in October'06 conducted by SGS, in Accra .

In the present organization we are involved with the production of food additive, a natural sweetener. I am involved in the implementation of ISO 22000:2005. It has been an experience. We are expecting the certification audit in Feb'07.

Your forums have been helpful in throwing light to many of the factors about which we were unaware, especially as we are doing the entire thing on our own.

That's great A Sankara, you will have gained a lot of experience implementing ISO 22000 by yourself, hopefully you can share it when members come looking for assistance on the forums.

Welcome to the forums.

Regards,
Simon

[KellyB]

I empathise with you, A Sankara! I am at the same position right now, the company where I work imports foodstuff from Asia. We are HACCP certified 3 years now, doing the entire thing on owr own (me being the supervisor with no former experience whatsoever), now we are switching to ISO 22000, our audit is due in March. It is quite an experience. What I find very hard is all the paperwork that has to be done, don't you agree?
Regards and welcome to the forums,
KellyB

[Charles.C]

Dear Kelly,

If paperwork related to HACCP = f(x) and for ISO product = f(y), then, generally -

f(y) >= 10 f(x)

The problem (for me anyway) has been not so much the quantity but WHY the quantity ?

Rgds / Charles.C

[KellyB]

What exactly do you mean, Charles. C, when you say "WHY the quantity", can you please be more specific?
Rgrds, KellyB

[Charles.C]

Dear Kelly,

Perhaps I should have stated that although I am fairly well acquainted with ISO9k2k due to the substantial incorporation within BRC Food and am a very long time user of HACCP, I am not a user nor have I read ISO22k or its various precursive drafts although I have acquired an idea of the flavour through this forum.
My comment therefore more refers to what I feel is a general tendency in ISO systems to overelaborate particularly in the descriptive / explanative style employed and the requirements expected. If you want style examples simply compare some reference HACCP presentations (for example NACMCF and [early] Codex). Such comments regarding ISO9k prior to the 2k version are of course not new and were attempted to be partially corrected in the substantially reduced documentation requirements. Unfortunately the simultaneous switch to the preferred 'operations' basis added a new complexity which many simple-minded people like myself felt to be completely uneccessary and creating more confusion (to auditors also I suspect having read some of the published interpretations at the time.)
This aspect seems (from reading the various ISO22k threads on this forum) to have reappeared in the attempt to formulate everything again in PDCA type systems plus the introduction of all the sub-species of QA control type variables, the latter, I think, is more a newer version of the latest Codex type HACCP methodology / terminology which I also consider a negative step.
As you can see, I should probably be labeled as a conservative in these matters however I do accept that certain subjects cannot be explained easily in simple terms, for example the evaluation of risk factors for which Codex recommend their 'tree' approach. I do not find this an ultimately very satisfactory procedure for reasons which can be found by a little searching in this forum.
I hope this partly answers yr query though I realize it remains short on specific examples, it was maybe more an opinion that ISO tends to make non-simple issues even more non-simple to understand by the layman for reasons which I often fail to understand. I should add that I admire the intention of ISO to present generalized methods for the issues referred here, I just wish that it was not necessary to learn a new language to understand them plus one could freely access their contents (another fundamental reason for HACCP's worldwide implementation IMO).

Sorry for length, as usual I talk too much.

Rgds / Charles.C

Edited by Charles.C, 19 December 2006 - 03:58 PM.

[KellyB]

I guess you are right Charles.C, the expression "why do you want to make your life difficult when you can make it completely impossible" goes well with the implementation of ISO 22k, but hey, on the other hand let's just hope that it will help us all have some "harmony" since it is supposed to be a worldwide standard. As the Latins said "Dum Spiro Spero" (for as long as I live, I shall keep hope).
Regards,
Kelly B.

[Simon]

I guess you are right Charles.C, the expression "why do you want to make your life difficult when you can make it completely impossible" goes well with the implementation of ISO 22k, but hey, on the other hand let's just hope that it will help us all have some "harmony" since it is supposed to be a worldwide standard. As the Latins said "Dum Spiro Spero" (for as long as I live, I shall keep hope).
Regards,
Kelly B.

I admire your positivity Kelly and we should be optimistic, but just in case do you know the latin for - doh!

Simon

[KellyB]

Well, Simon, if you mean the translation of the English word "doh" (=to do something obvious wrong ?) to ancient Latin, though it's been quite some time that I have finished my latin courses at school, I think it is "quispiam nefas". (Are you insinuating anything...?)
Any objections for the translation?
Regards,
Kelly B.

[Simon]

Well, Simon, if you mean the translation of the English word "doh" (=to do something obvious wrong ?) to ancient Latin, though it's been quite some time that I have finished my latin courses at school, I think it is "quispiam nefas". (Are you insinuating anything...?)
Any objections for the translation?
Regards,
Kelly B.

Thank you Kelly.

Simon

[Charles.C]

Dear Kelly,

Im happy to see that the often quoted English work ethic is an internationally recognized standard (or perhaps it was first borrowed from the Greeks? - actually I had an idea that the Italians are even more clever at promoting complications?).
Regarding the Latin addenda, havent had a chance to check back yet but am slightly suspicious that three words of Latin require 10 words of English. Also seems that Latin does not include commas ? Anyway, Ill give you the benefit of the doubt for the moment since it is the New Year.
As my old textbook had had added to the first page by a previous suffering student

Latin is a dead language,
As dead as dead can be,
It killed the Ancient Romans,
And now its killing me !

Rgds / Charles.C

[KellyB]

Dear Charles.C,

Its true ancient latin is a dead language though it still is the base for all Latin languages and for other languages also. For example, the Latins used to say "Scripta manen, verba volen= written stories remain, spoken stories fly away). We still use the words "script" and "verbal" man-en gave us the route for "re-ma(i)n" etc etc. "Ethic" is a Greek word and ethic was teached as a virtue yet long before Parthenon was built (aroung 500 b.c) and is still used as it is in modern greek.

You are correct, 3 words of latin require 10 words of any other language, its true they had no commas and it was written in capital letters. Language never killed anybody. Superficiality perhaps did.

But this is just language history.

I believe that every language has it own history and has to be respected as such.

After all, we all use English in order to communicate with each other, don't we?

To cut a long story short, and to go back to the subject (ISO 22k), to you believe that it will help us improve in globalizing quality matters?

Regards,

Kelly B.

[Charles.C]

Dear Kelly,

Ths for the fascinating reply. I think you missed yr vocation, you should be teaching Latin and English also
Re the ISO, as I mentioned above, one of my prime complaints is over the communication / copyright aspect. BRC is not superior in this respect either of course but then it has a somewhat more commercial objective. Both lose out when compared to HACCP IMO.
What we need is a "freeware" version of (HACCP + ISO 9k2k) but without the ISO language weirdnesses and including an explicit risk evaluation procedure etc

Rgds / Charles.C

[KellyB]

I agree with you Charles!
But then, what would consultants do? It looks as a conspiracy to me, they are all going to get paid again
Rgds/Kelly B.

[KellyB]

If anybody interested, I found a brief description of whats changing between HACCP and ISO 22k its all presented in Powerpoint, pls let me know and I shall post it as a topic if it doesn't exist somewhere yet.
Rgds/KellyB.

[Simon]

If anybody interested, I found a brief description of whats changing between HACCP and ISO 22k its all presented in Powerpoint, pls let me know and I shall post it as a topic if it doesn't exist somewhere yet.
Rgds/KellyB.

That would be great Kelly.

Simon

[Simon]

Kelly posted the file in this thread but I moved it to here: HACCP / ISO 22000 Differences