International Organization for Standardization (ISO) are groups of governmental and non-governmental agencies from 148 member countries coming together to create quality (9001) and environmental (14001) standards for suppliers, users, government regulators and other interest groups. The organization became official on February 23, 1947 and its administrative offices are based in Geneva, Switzerland. ISO is responsible for setting standards for materials used in manufacturing as well as testing and analyzing terminology and services. Because of its efforts ISO has been credited with bridging relationships and consensus amongst its members, and helping both consumers and users worldwide experience higher quality products.
EurepGAP ( www.eurep.org) is a partnership of agricultural producers and retail customers working together to ensure that wholesome food is produced in a socially responsible manner. EurepGAP provides the standards and framework for independent third party verification and certification of growers to ensure that only those who comply with established practices are certified. Food safety concerns are addressed through HACCP principles. EurepGAP certification ensures that agricultural production is done in a way that will minimize negative impact on the environment based on good agricultural practices. Finally, to be certified, a producer must prove that it respects worker health, safety and welfare as well as other socially related issues.
The Food and Drug Administration has adopted a food safety program developed over 30 years ago for astronauts and is applying it to the U.S. food supply. Traditionally, industry and regulators have depended on spot-checks of manufacturing conditions and random sampling of final products to ensure safe food. This approach, however, tends to be reactive, rather than preventive. The new system is known as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point, or HACCP (pronounced hassip). HACCP involves seven principles:
- Analyze hazards. Potential hazards associated with a food and measures to control those hazards are identified. The hazard could be biological, such as a microbe; chemical, such as a toxin; or physical, such as ground glass or metal fragments.
- Identify critical control points. These are points in a food's production--from its raw state through processing and shipping to consumption by the consumer--at which the potential hazard can be controlled or eliminated. Examples are cooking, cooling, packaging, and metal detection.
- Establish preventive measures with critical limits for each control point. For a cooked food, for example, this might include setting the minimum cooking temperature and time required to ensure the elimination of any harmful microbes.
- Establish procedures to monitor the critical control points. Such procedures might include determining how and by whom cooking time and temperature should be monitored.
- Establish corrective actions to be taken when monitoring shows that a critical limit has not been met--for example, reprocessing or disposing of food if the minimum cooking temperature is not met.
- Establish procedures to verify that the system is working properly--for example, testing time-and-temperature recording devices to verify that a cooking unit is working properly.
- Establish effective record keeping to document the HACCP system. This would include records of hazards and their control methods, the monitoring of safety requirements and action taken to correct potential problems. Each of these principles must be backed by sound scientific knowledge: for example, published microbiological studies on time and temperature factors for controlling food borne pathogens. http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~lrd/haccp.html
stands for integrated pest management.
IPM means that a grower uses all practical pest control practices, rather than relying on only one practice (such as calendar based application of pesticides). For example, we would control pests in an integrated manner by: planting resistant varieties, planting at a time of the year or in a geographical location where certain pests do not occur, we use physical barriers (row covers) to exclude pests from the crop, we use pheromones to lure pests to insect traps where they are killed, crops are grown under conditions that reduce their susceptibility to a pest (fertilizer and irrigation practices) or limit economic impact of by a pest, when pesticides are used they are applied when a damage threshold is reached (to reduce unnecessary applications) and a pesticide is selected on the basis of a spectrum that only kills the damaging pests without affecting beneficial insects. Del Monte uses IPM in all its agricultural operations
. Social Accountability International (SAI) works to improve workplaces and combat sweatshops through the expansion and further development of the international workplace standard, SA8000, and the associated verification system. SA8000 is currently in use by businesses and governments around the world and is broadly recognized by trade unions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as one of the strongest workplace standards. Certification to SA8000 promotes management systems that upgrade working conditions. SAI is a U.S.-based, nonprofit organization dedicated to the development, implementation and oversight of voluntary verifiable social accountability standards. http://www.sa-intl.org/
The Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) is an alliance of companies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and trade union organizations who work together to promote and improve the implementation of corporate codes of practice which cover supply chain working conditions. After good practice is established in a certain country or industry, shared members work cohesively to monitor and support fair trade practices. http://www.ethicaltrade.org/
The International Labor Organization is the UN specialized agency which seeks the promotion of social justice and internationally recognized human and labor rights. It was founded in 1919 and is the only surviving major creation of the Treaty of Versailles. The ILO formulates international labor standards in the form of Conventions and Recommendations setting minimum standards of basic labor rights: freedom of association, the right to organize, collective bargaining, abolition of forced labor, equality of opportunity and treatment, and other standards regulating conditions across the entire spectrum of work related issues. Within the UN system, the ILO has a unique tripartite structure with workers and employers participating as equal partners with governments in the work of its governing organs. http://www.ilo.org/
ISO 9001. The standard is used when conformance with specific requirements is to be assured by the supplier during several product stages, including design and development, production, testing, inspection, and servicing. Provides a model for the design and development process, as well as production, installation, and servicing of a product.
A standard for quality control and traceability. ISO 9002 documents and formalizes the process and methods by which we work in all departments of the business. Provides a model for a company only in the manufacturing, installation, and service areas. ISO 9002 carries the same requirements as ISO 9001, but excludes those requirements, which deal with design control.
ISO 14000. A collection of the best practices for managing an organization's impact on the environment. The ISO 14000 standards are designed to provide an internationally-recognized framework for environmental management, measurement, evaluation, and auditing.
A common model for an environmental management system has been formulated by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) which standardizes the elements that an environmental management system should contain. The ISO 14001 standard has been designed to be applicable to organizations of all types. ISO 14001 is an international standard for environmental management systems and offers environmental certification.
