BRC: British Retail Consortium. A group of British companies that publish guidance and standards for food manufacturers, including a food safety standard that is also commonly referred to as BRC.
CoOL or COOL: Country of Origin Labelling.
EMA: Economically motivated adulteration or substitution. EMA is a subset of food fraud and is defined as the fraudulent, intentional substitution or addition of a substance, or dilution of a substance for the purposes of economic gain. Non-EMA food fraud includes black market importation and trading of food and alcoholic beverages for the purposes of avoiding duty and taxes.
DEFRA: The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, a United Kingdom government department responsible for food production and standards as well as environmental and agricultural responsibilities.
FDA: Food and Drugs Administration. The FDA is the name of a regulatory body in a number of countries, including USA, Philippines and India.
FSA: Food Standards Agency, a United Kingdom government regulatory body.
FSMA: Sometimes pronounced ‘Fizzmah’. Stands for Food Safety Modernisation Act (United States of America).
FSSC 22000: A food safety management system standard similar to ISO 22000 but with extra requirements incorporated to meet the requirements of a GFSI standard.
GFSI: Global Food Safety Initiative. The GFSI is a group of food companies whose mission is to harmonize, strengthen, and improve food safety management systems around the globe. The GFSI provides direction and approval to organisations that create food safety management systems, so a GFSI-approved food safety standard is one that represents international best practice. Well known GFSI standards include BRC, FSSC 22000 and SQF.
GMO: Genetically Modified Organism.
HACCP: Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (Pronounced ‘hassup’) HACCP = food safety. HACCP is a set of principles designed to control and prevent food safety risks during food production. The ideas of HACCP form the basis every food safety standard that is in use today. HACCP is not owned or regulated by any organisation. The principles of HACCP are codified (written down) by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which is part of the United Nations (UN), in a set of documents called the Codex Alimentarius , a latin phrase which translates to “Book of Food”. The principles of HACCP are described in the Annex of the Codex document GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF FOOD HYGIENE CAC/RCP 1-1969. You can download a copy of the actual document here.
HARCP: Hazard Analysis Risk-based Preventive Control. HARCP = food safety as legislated by the United States. This acronymn being used by some in the USA when talking about the requirements of the recently enacted Food Safety Modernisation Act (FSMA) in that country. HARCP is claimed to differ from HACCP by including preventive controls, a claim which may be based on a misunderstanding of the best practice for pre-requisite programs in a HACCP-based food safety system. Read more about HARCP here.
ISO 22000: ISO is the International Organisation for Standardization. They have thousands of standards across many different businesses, products and systems. ISO 22000 is the ISO standard for food safety management systems. Like other major food safety management systems it is based on the principles of HACCP.
NSF: a pseudo-government organisation head-quartered in the United States that is active in the area of food safety and sanitation.
SQF: Safe Quality Food Institute. The Safe Quality Food Institute owns and publishes a group of food safety standards also known as SQF that is a GFSI – approved standard.
USP: United States Pharmacopeial Convention. USP is a non-profit organisation that creates identity and purity standards for food ingredients and food chemicals, as well as for medical drugs.
TACCP: Threat Assessment Critical Control Point. TACCP = prevention of malicious threats to food.
VACCP: Vulnerability Assessment Critical Control Point. VACCP = food fraud prevention (specifically prevention of EMA). Learn more about TACCP and VACCP here.
Learn about Vulnerability Assessments, what they are and how to do them, here.