ISO 45001 for food industry

Buyers in the food trade check hygiene and product safety first. The supplier questionnaire then asks a second question: how do you protect the people on your lines? A certificate answers it in one line, with a number the buyer can look up.

The reason is practical. A serious accident stops a line, a shift or a whole plant, and a customer does not want to depend on a supplier whose cold store or packaging hall runs on routine alone. Tenders from caterers and institutional kitchens can carry the same requirement. A bakery with 25 employees and a meat processor with 120 often receive the identical form.

ISO 45001 itself is voluntary. It becomes necessary the moment a customer, a tender or a partner writes it into the conditions.

• ISO 45001 at a glance

The standard does not list hazards for you. It requires that you find them yourself, workplace by workplace, and deal with them before someone is hurt. In a food business the same places come up again and again.

Wet and slippery floors

Washdown water, condensation and spilled product make halls and cold stores slick. Drainage, footwear and cleaning routines are typical controls.

Cutting and slicing machinery

Slicers, band saws, grinders and mixers injure hands. Fixed guards and a locked-off machine during cleaning are the usual answer.

Conveyors and packaging lines

Staff clear jams and clean while parts can still move. A defined stop-and-secure procedure closes this gap.

Heat and cold

Ovens, fryers, steam and hot water cause burns. Cold stores and freezers add cold stress for people who work there for hours.

Cleaning chemicals

Alkaline and acidic cleaners splash and give off fumes. Correct dosing, eye protection and readable labels belong to the control measures.

Manual handling and repetitive work

Lifting crates and sacks, or packing the same motion for a whole shift, leads to back and wrist problems. Job rotation and lifting aids reduce the load.

Internal transport

Forklifts and pallet trucks share loading areas with people on foot. Marked walkways and clear traffic rules separate the two.

The standard follows the usual structure from clause 4 (context) to clause 10 (improvement). Clause 5 puts responsibility with senior management, clause 8 covers operation on the shop floor. The table shows what the main requirements mean in a production site.

Take a bakery with a night shift. The owner walks through dough preparation, ovens and dispatch with two employees and writes down what could hurt someone: flour dust at the mixer, hot trays at the oven, forklift traffic at the loading door. Each point gets a control and a person responsible. The list is short, but it exists and it gets reviewed.

In a meat plant the same exercise starts at the slicer and the cold room. Knives and slicers get cut-resistant gloves and guards. The cold room gets a rule on maximum time inside and a way to raise the alarm from within. After a near miss at the packaging line, the team records it, changes the cleaning procedure and checks three months later whether the change held. That record is what a customer audit looks for.

Zertify issues the certificate on the basis of an online self-assessment. There is no on-site audit. The certificate is issued by G6 Agency AG under licence from SICE, and SICE reviews every assessment before it is issued.

1. 01

   Answer 34 yes/no questions

   14 of them are mandatory requirements of the standard and must all be answered yes. Of the other 20, at least 14 must be yes. The assessment is free and needs no registration.

2. 02

   Pass and pay

   If you pass, you pay online. No account is needed to buy.

3. 03

   Receive the certificate

   The PDF arrives within 4 hours after passing and payment.

4. 04

   Send the verification link

   Every certificate can be checked publicly by number or QR code. Put the QR code in your reply to the supplier questionnaire and the buyer verifies it alone.

• Start the free self-assessment
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• ISO 45001 on Zertify

The classic route means an on-site audit by a certification body. Some customer contracts name that route explicitly, so read the certification wording in your tender or supplier agreement before you decide. If the document only asks for an ISO 45001 certificate, a verifiable certificate with a yearly online re-audit may be enough.

The self-assessment does not replace the work itself. The questions ask whether hazards are assessed, workers consulted and incidents followed up. If your answer is no, fix that first and then run the assessment again.

• Compare the certification routes
• Certification without an on-site audit
• What certification costs