Design of a Food Safety Management System Improvement Plan based on ISO 22000 Standard in a Packaging Manufacturing Company

Abstract

The present work was presented in a company that produces flexible packaging located in San Juan de Los Morros, Guárico state, Venezuela. In recent months, there has been an increase in rejected product since flexible packaging does not meet the appropriate characteristics or the required quality and food safety standards, therefore the safety of consumers cannot be guaranteed and, consequently, the product cannot be distributed. Due to the above, the present research was carried out, whose main objective was to design an improvement plan for the food safety management system based on the ISO 22000 standard. For its development, firstly, the related to food safety processes (production processes, warehouse planning and logistics, quality assurance, occupational health and safety and integrated management systems). Subsequently, unstructured interviews were carried out and through the direct observation technique the main factors that were affecting the food safety management system were detected. Once the polluting factors were found, they were studied and analyzed, detecting that these are mainly due to failures in cleaning and maintenance of both the areas and the infrastructure, equipment and machinery, outdated HACCP program, reports of poor pest management and incorrect pest control devices. It was shown that there was a relationship between the factors found, so they were grouped into 6 sets. Finally, improvements were proposed for each of the sets in order to improve processes, reduce the amount of contaminated product and guarantee food safety for consumers

Keywords: food safety, contaminated product, ISO 22000 standard