Barriers to the Application of the ISO22000 Food Safety Management System in Egyptian Flight Catering Companies

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Department of Hotel Management, Faculty of Tourism and Hotels - University of Sadat City

Abstract

The safety of passengers and crew is a top priority for the airline industry. This includes serving in-flight food that is not harmful to the health and safety of passengers and crew. Food safety is important. Consumers have a right to expect that those who supply the food that they buy have taken care to manufacture products that do not cause harm. There are several potential benefits of the implementation of ISO22000, such as the ability to provide consistently secure foods, products, and services that meet applicable legal and regulatory customer requirements and address the risks associated with the objectives. The research aims to identify the reasons for gaps that appear in the application process of the ISO22000 Food Safety Management System. The case study was chosen for this study. Two different methods were adopted to collect data; interviews and questionnaires. A personal interview was conducted with the quality manager of the flight catering company under study to identify the gaps that currently exist in the ISO 2000 safety management system. Then, a questionnaire was designed for the employees of the flight catering company to identify the causes of those gaps. A number of 39 questionnaire forms were distributed. This number represents the total number of employees working in the operation within the surveyed flight catering company. The respondents returned 33 of the 39 forms. Upon emptying the data, 3 questionnaires were excluded because they were not valid for analysis, and thus 30 questionnaires were analyzed. Data were analyzed using the SPSS system. A mixed approach to analyze the study data has also been used. The research made several recommendations for in-flight catering companies to avoid these gaps when implementing the system.

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