Dutch salad producer Rainbow Growers was officially awarded the ISO 22000 food safety certificate for its packhouse, Rainbow Kleinpak BV, in the Netherlands at Fruit Logistica.
MPS ceo Theo de Groot presented the ISO 22000 certificate to Rainbow Growers’ food safety and product manager Fred van Dijk on the second day of the show to mark the achievement, which only one other Dutch fruit and vegetable company has gained so far.
Rainbow Growers believes that ISO 22000 will become the umbrella standard for food safety.
Rainbow Growers’ Ingrid Plomp told freshinfo: “Food safety is obviously a very important topic and the ISO accreditation will eventually replace the British Retail Consortium (BRC) certificate. This certificate is just for the packing station, but within 18 months we will apply it to our sales and logistics department. This is just the beginning.
“The ISO is worldwide and operates in more than 30 countries. It details food safety and has the perfect management system. We have many certificates, but this one covers everything possible. We expect that the whole Rainbow organisation will be covered by 2011.”
The audit took place in October, November and December 2009 in the presence of the Council of Accreditation. The ISO 22000 is an additional accreditation for Rainbow Growers, which also works to BRC, IFS, HACCP A and HACCP B standards.
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