Australia and New Zealand export food at scale. Dairy, red meat, grain, wine, seafood, horticulture, infant formula. In most of those supply chains the question is not whether you need food safety certification. It is which scheme your buyer will actually accept.

That question has a more specific answer than most consultancies give, and getting it wrong is expensive in a particular way. You complete an eight-month project, receive a certificate, send it to your largest customer, and discover it does not satisfy their supplier approval requirements.

Start here: three questions that decide your scheme

One. Has a buyer specified a scheme by name?

If a customer contract or supplier approval standard names BRCGS, SQF or FSSC 22000, that is your answer and the rest of this page is background reading. Buyer specification overrides every other consideration, including your own preference and your consultant's.

Two. Has a buyer asked for a GFSI recognised scheme without naming one?

Then ISO 22000 on its own will not satisfy them, and this is the point that catches Australian manufacturers out most often. The Global Food Safety Initiative benchmarks certification schemes so that major retailers and manufacturers can accept one audit instead of running their own. ISO 22000 is not GFSI recognised. FSSC 22000 is, because it adds the sector prerequisite programs and additional requirements that GFSI benchmarking demands.

Three. Has nobody asked for anything specific?

Then you have a genuine choice, and it should be made on where your business is heading rather than where it is. If export or major retail supply is on the roadmap within two years, build to FSSC 22000 now. If you are supplying food service or regional customers with no GFSI expectation, ISO 22000 is a legitimate and cheaper destination.

The schemes, compared

For most Australian food manufacturers, FSSC 22000 is the destination and ISO 22000 is a component of it rather than an alternative to it.

What sits inside FSSC 22000

The scheme is built in three layers, and understanding that structure explains why the project scopes the way it does.

The legal floor underneath certification

None of these schemes replaces your regulatory obligations, and those apply whether or not you certify.

Domestic food law

The FSANZ Food Standards Code governs food safety practices, food safety programs for certain sectors, labelling, composition and contaminant limits across Australia and New Zealand. It is enforced through state and territory food acts, administered by state health departments and local councils, which handle registration, inspection and enforcement. Primary production and processing standards add sector-specific requirements for dairy, meat, poultry, seafood, eggs and other categories.

Export control

If you export prescribed goods, the Export Control Act 2020 and its rules apply. That means export registration for your establishment and an approved arrangement documenting how you meet export and importing country requirements. This is a legal regime administered by the department, entirely separate from commercial certification, and it catches exporters who assumed a GFSI certificate covered them.

Importing country requirements

Market-specific conditions that vary by country and product, and which change without a great deal of notice. Certification helps you demonstrate control; it does not tell you what China or the European Union requires of your particular product this quarter.

What export markets expect

How a food safety project runs with us

Twenty to thirty-six weeks from a standing start is realistic. The variable that moves the timeline most is not documentation. It is whether your prerequisite programs require physical work.

Step one — Confirm the scheme and the category

Which scheme your buyers require, and which food chain category applies to you. Category determines which prerequisite program standard you implement, and getting it wrong is discovered at Stage 1 when it is expensive to fix.

Step two — Gap analysis against all three layers

Current practice assessed against ISO 22000, the applicable prerequisite program standard and the FSSC additional requirements together, not sequentially.

Step three — Prerequisite programs

The unglamorous foundation and usually the longest phase. Where facility, drainage or segregation work is needed, this becomes a capital project with its own timeline and we will tell you that early rather than late.

Step four — Hazard analysis and HACCP

Hazard identification, control measure selection, CCP and OPRP determination, and validated critical limits with the supporting science documented.

Step five — Additional requirements

Food fraud vulnerability assessment, food defence, allergen management with cleaning validation, environmental monitoring with trend analysis, and food safety culture built as something an auditor can test.

Step six — Verification, traceability and recall

Monitoring and verification activities, traceability system, and a mock recall designed to stress the system rather than to pass.

Step seven — Audit and certification

Full internal audit, documented management review, then Stage 1 and Stage 2 with a JAS-ANZ accredited body. We attend both.

Where we add value that others do not

Food production regions we work in

Dairy work takes us to Gippsland, south-west Victoria, Tasmania, northern New South Wales and south-east South Australia. Red meat and smallgoods clients sit in and around Melbourne, Brisbane, Toowoomba, Rockhampton, Wagga Wagga, Dubbo, Perth and Adelaide.

Wine and beverage work spans the Barossa, McLaren Vale, the Hunter Valley, the Yarra Valley, Margaret River, the Riverina and Tasmania. Seafood and aquaculture takes us to Hobart, Devonport, Port Lincoln, Coffin Bay, Darwin, Cairns and southern Western Australia.

Horticulture and fresh produce work covers Shepparton, Griffith, Bundaberg, Sunraysia, the Lockyer Valley, Carnarvon and Bowen. Grain, milling and bakery clients sit in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Toowoomba, Wagga Wagga and Northam. Infant formula, nutritionals, packaging and ingredient manufacturers concentrate in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Tasmania.