May 17, 2021 Types of Food Certification in India

A look at the types of food certification in India and how to get ISO 22000 certification for your restaurant.

Food certifications in India are plenty, especially if you are in the business of manufacturing food items or serving food at a local restaurant. While getting a food certification wasn’t a widespread practice in the past, it is fast becoming one of the most reliable ways to ensure that your food business indulges in best hygiene practises, takes care of food safety, builds goodwill, and enjoys multiple legal benefits. More importantly, food certifications are a foolproof way to win customers’ trust. Besides, these certifications come in handy when the business needs to expand either locally or internationally.

Types of Food Certifications in India

• AGMARK

Offered by the Ministry of Agricultural & Farmers Welfare, AGMARK is a certification mark that is given approval by the Directorate of Marketing and Inspection. Legally enforce back in the year 1937 for Grading and Marking of Agricultural Produce AGMARK standards lay quality guidelines for 220+ commodities such as fresh produce, pulses, cereals, vegetable as well as essential oils and semi-processed food products.

• BIS

Offered by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution the Bureau of Indian Standards or BIS offers quality certifications for food items including but not limited to Food Colours, Food Additives, Vanaspati, Milk Powder, Condensed Milk and various packing containers.

• HACCP

Acronym for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points, HACCP is a preventive approach that ensures the safety of food items from various biological, chemical, physical and even radiological hazards in production processes. HACCP ensures that finished food products are safe, thereby reducing the time and effort required in the inspection of the finished products. The HACCP system can be implemented at all stages of a food chain, right from food production to packaging and eventually distribution.

GHP

Under Good Hygiene Practices or GHP, hotels and restaurants are required to ensure that a fair level of sanitary and hygiene processes are being practiced. This helps in making sure that the food that is being served is safe and ideal for human consumption.

Halal Certification

As the name suggests, Halal Certification is offered for food and other consumables to mark them permissible for consumption by followers of Islam. A Halal Certification ensures that there is no haram involved, neither in the process nor in the product (as per Shariah law). Halal Certification is offered by certain private companies from India, and restaurants can avail the same if they follow the requisite practices.

ISO 22000 Certification

ISO 22000 Certification is offered by the Group of International Standards for Food Safety Management. In the present-day scenario, this certification has become a universal standard and can be easily applied to fresh food producers, food manufacturers, processors, packagers as well as retailers, complete with hotels and restaurants. The truly global norms of the ISO 22000 Certification ensure effective practices combined with high quality of food and security.

How to Get ISO 22000 Certification for Your Restaurant?

Considering the fact that ISO 22000 Certification can only be obtained by restaurants that adhere to the highest quality standards, the process for obtaining the certification is rather meticulous. You can rely on a private company or a third party to help you obtain the certification, you can expect to go through the following steps –

Need Analysis – Here the third party will assess if there is any gap between the quality standard and performance of the restaurant and the expectation of the certifying agency. In case the gap exists, the third party notifies the restaurant of the same and offers them a set of measures that ought to be taken.

Training and Implementation – Once the restaurant owners and operators are made aware of the gap, the third party offers the requisite training to the staff such that the standards can be raised to meet both – parameters set by ISO as well as customers’ expectations. Once the training is complete, the desired measures are put into practice.

Documentation – When the restaurant’s quality standards and functioning is up to the mark, the next step will be preparing the documentation for filing the application for ISO certification.

Certification – After the successful implementation of the desired measures and filing of the application, the third party consultant will assist the restaurant in securing the ISO 22000 Certification.

We hope that you are now up to speed as far as food certifications in India are concerned. For what they’re worth, these certifications play an important role in building a restaurants’ reputation amongst the locals, and also open the doors for its growth and expansion in the future.

For more information on Food certifications – you may visit: www.sgsgroup.in

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