Comparison of official food control results in Finland between food establishments with and without a certified food safety management system

Certified food safety management systems (FSMSs), such as ISO 22000 and BRC, along with official food control, focus on food safety. European Union regulation 2017/625 requires to take FSMSs and their audits into account in official food control. To assess the possibility to decrease official food control frequency due to certified FSMSs the association of certified FSMSs on food business operators' (FBO) compliance was examined. The results of 1484 official inspections of 110 Finnish food establishments representing slaughterhouses, other meat establishments, fish and milk establishments, and bakeries with (n = 59) and without (n = 51) certified FSMS were studied over the period of 2016–2018. Altogether, 14 356 scores were given to 87 different items during the inspections. The comparison of scores between food establishments with and without certified FSMS discovered minor differences: 98.3% and 98.0% of inspected items in food establishments with and without a certified FSMS, respectively, did not impair food safety. The association between certified FSMSs and food establishments’ compliance was inconsistent in different establishment types and among inspected items. Therefore, the results do not support a decrease in the frequency of official food control inspections merely based on the existence of a certified FSMS. Instead, the results advocate for an individual assessment of the FBO's inspection frequency, based on the history of compliance.