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The Middle East's hospitality industry remains divided over best practice guidelines for food safety and hygiene.
Despite the fact that many of the region's hotels and restaurants are in the process of gaining HACCP certification at present to meet international standards of safety, Coral Deira Dubai general manager Naucer Mechmoum claimed these standards were "absolutely out of date and obsolete, as they are more than half a century old".
"The UAE has witnessed an impressive development in the hotel sector in terms of products and standards, and I'm sure that hygiene is given the appropriate consideration. However, since HACCP was first established in the 1960s, science, technology and our profession have progressed tremendously," he pointed out.
Nowadays, the innovation in the food safety field was ISO 22000, Mechmoum stated, which was established in October 2005.
"The HACCP guidelines only account for about 20% of this particular food safety management system," he said.
"The critical control points (CCPs) deal with cooking and storage temperatures whereas ISO 22000 is a management system that starts with the origin of the raw materials at the level of the suppliers or producers."
Mechmoum was convinced of ISO 22000's superiority because it took the aspects of food storage, requisitioning, dispatching and preparation into consideration.
"Every link of the food production chain is recorded. HACCP is only a method to control a particular food production stage, whereas ISO 22000 is a complete and comprehensive process to help businesses achieve safe products," he summarised.
Oman-based Food Safety Consultancy general manger and senior food safety advisor Fran Collison disagreed strongly with Mechmoum, however, describing his views as "worrying".
"While HACCP is at the forefront of many hotels' and catering establishments' agendas, [these] comments, which promoted another type of food safety standard, could be confusing to those who are trying so hard to get their operations in line," she explained.
"Essentially, ISO is expensive and consultants and certification services seem to be able to use it as a license to print money.
"As good as the standards may be, no government or international organisation to my knowledge promotes the ISO 22000 as the standard to use for food safety management."
Collison also opposed Mechmoum's assertion that HACCP only dealt with elements such as cooking and storage temperatures, stating that the regulations covered the entire food safety and hygiene process, "from farm to fork".
"ISO 22000 is as good as the auditor or certification company that enforces it and, in my opinion, many auditors are not technically competent in assessing to the required standard," she added.
Dr. John Surak of Surak & Associates, a full-service food safety and quality consulting service, said that improvements needed to be made to the current regulatory system in order to eliminate any confusion.
"There is a need for a unified [food safety] process."
"There are dozens of accreditations necessary for different markets, which are all slightly similar but slightly different," he explained.
"What I believe is really impressive is the overwhelming desire for industry and government in the region to build the necessary infrastructure for better food safety management programmes to be implemented."
• Identifying any hazards that must be prevented, eliminated or reduced to within acceptable levels.
• Identifying the critical control points at the step - or steps - at which control is essential to prevent or eliminate a hazard or to reduce it to acceptable levels.
• Establishing critical limits at critical control points that separate acceptability from unacceptability for the prevention, elimination or reduction of identified hazards.
• Establishing and implementing effective monitoring procedures at critical control points.
• Establishing corrective actions when monitoring indicates that a critical control point is not under control.
• Establishing various procedures that will be carried out regularly to verify the measures outlined in the above points.
• Establishing documents and records commensurate with the nature and size of the food business in question to demonstrate the effective application of the measures outlined above.
