Approximately 3,000 people die in the United States each year from their food being inadvertently poisoned. This alarming statistic has led to significant improvements in the food safety certification business, including those that are not even directly tied to the food industry. These include things like AS9100 certification, which is actually specific to the aerospace industry, and ISO 14000, which is a set of environmentally specific standards that address how organizations can positively minimize their impact on the environment while also complying with similar worldwide and nationwide regulations. These regulations may seem unrelated to the food industry, but they all serve viable purposes in a world where regulations help control the delivery of all items to keep the general population safe from harm.
Capability maturity model integration, or Cmmi certification, is another similar regulation somewhat related to AS9100 in that it involves more of a process improvement standard, which then is used as a guide toward improving processes across an entire organization, division, or project. It again is not entirely related to food standards, but just like AS9100 it has appropriate parts that relate directly to the many ways those in the food industry can keep people free from food related microbial hazards like salmonella, staphylococcal enterotoxins, listeria monocytogenes, and E. coli O157:H7.
HACCP certification is a more closely related standard to the food industry, relating more closely to pharmaceuticals and food handling than other standards and regulations. Through HACCP certification training, food handlers can gain considerable knowledge to understand how food is made, packaged, shipped and delivered. It ties in very closely with Senate Bill 303, which also is known as the California Food Handler Card Law and which requires all food handlers, storage professionals and servers to have a card on them at all times while at work.
AS9100, HACCP, CMMI and ISO 14000 all demonstrate the vital needs for controls and regulations across all industries, not just the food handling and serving ones. That is why regulations exist in all industries where safety is a concern and hazards are present. By having standards and regulations like AS9100 and others, companies across the entire planet can have formal training and education on the things that pertain to their businesses. And through meeting ISO certification requirements, they can enjoy more positive experiences at work and less of the negative ones that could lead to lawsuits and the aforementioned deaths.