HACCP and ISO 22000 in Rabat

HACCP, as described by the Codex Alimentarius in text CXC 1-1969, substantially revised in 2020, is a method: analyse the hazards of a product and a process, determine where they are controlled, set validated limits, monitor, correct, verify and document. ISO 22000:2018 turns it into a complete management system, certifiable by an accredited body, with objectives, competences, internal audits and management review. The standard received a climate amendment in 2024 and its revision is under way, with no publication date announced: you certify against the edition in force.

In the Rabat region, the question often arrives through public procurement. Administrations and public bodies that buy food check the bidder's sanitary authorisation or approval, and some specifications also ask for an ISO certificate. Companies that supply these buyers, like those supplying distributors and manufacturers along the Rabat-Casablanca axis, are better off making their HACCP plan the basis of an ISO 22000 system rather than a piece of paperwork in a file.

The region's food sector is made up mostly of small and medium-sized companies: industrial bakeries and pastry makers, meat or dairy processing workshops, ready-meal makers, packers of spices, honey or dry goods, juice and beverage units. Many are located in the industrial zones of Ain Atiq and Temara, in Skhirat or around Sale.

For these companies, the first question is regulatory: does the ONSSA regime, authorisation or approval, still match the real activities of the site, and does the HACCP plan describe today's lines? The second is commercial: a private customer or a public tender asks for a certified system, with a deadline.

The service also concerns food wholesalers and distributors in the region, warehouses that store food on behalf of third parties, and suppliers who deliver food to public institutions in the capital and must present a flawless sanitary file.

Rabat is Morocco's administrative capital and the centre of the Rabat-Sale-Kenitra region. Ministries, public institutions and large public buyers have their headquarters there, and the city's economy rests largely on services, administration, information technology and construction. Technopolis, in Sale, brings together technology and service companies.

Industry is more scattered than in Casablanca. It is found in the zones of Ain Atiq and Temara, in Skhirat and around Sale: light industry and food processing that supply mainly the domestic market, the capital's mass consumption, distributors, public institutions and industrial customers. Companies are often mid-sized, with a small quality team, sometimes a single person who carries the sanitary file, complaints and training all at once.

This profile changes how a HACCP or ISO 22000 project is run. The plan generally exists, because it was filed for the sanitary authorisation or approval, but it has not followed changes in recipes, equipment or premises. The management system, for its part, remains to be created. The project must therefore move forward without overloading an already busy team, and train several people so that the system does not rest on one person.

Public procurement adds a calendar constraint. A tender sets a submission date, and a certificate cannot be obtained in a few weeks. Companies aiming at these markets do well to plan their certification well before the consultations that interest them are published.

Public buyers in the region first ask for administrative documents: the ONSSA sanitary authorisation or approval number covering the products offered and, where the specification provides for it, a valid ISO certificate whose scope matches those products. A certificate that covers another site or another range does not meet the requirement. Private customers, distributors and manufacturers, look more at the HACCP plan itself, analysis results, traceability and responsiveness in case of a complaint.

In the region's SMEs, audit nonconformities concentrate on a few points. The HACCP team is reduced to the quality manager, and production does not know the critical limits. Diagrams date from the filing of the sanitary file and show neither the new lines nor rework. Prerequisite programmes are written, but nothing proves they are applied: no cleaning records, no pest monitoring, no water checks. For ISO 22000, the internal audit and management review have never been held and objectives are not measured. Finally, suppliers are not evaluated, yet the auditor always asks how they were chosen.