Food Standards

Introduction

The Food Industry Standards Committee (FISC) is the national oversight committee for participation in National (Irish Standard or I.S.) European (European Norm or EN) and International standardisation (International standard organisation or ISO). The members of FISC include representatives from all parties that maybe interested or affected by National, European or International standardisation projects.  FISC meets twice per year to review the activities of the specialist working groups that operate under the umbrella of the main committee.

The mission of FISC is to ensure, in so far as is practical that the interested and affected parties are notified in a timely manner of standardisation activities  in the areas of feed and food  and provide an opportunity to have input into the development of standards.

ISO and CEN Level

At ISO level, FISC monitors the activities of one committee called ISO TC 34 "Food Products", this committee has 16 Sub committees (SCs) some of which e.g. SC 9 "Microbiology" has 22 working groups (WGs). In addition ISO TC 34 has a number of topic specific Working Groups e.g .WG 17 Water Activity.

A number of CEN Technical Committee are monitored by national experts of FISC

• CEN TC 275 "Food analysis -Horizontal methods"
• CEN TC 302 "Milk and Milk products – Methods of sampling"
• CEN TC 327 " Animal feeding stuffs – Methods of sampling and analysis"
• CEN TC 338 " Cereal and cereal products"

At National Level NSAI have published a number of food related standards, which you can view here.