Hygiene and Food Safety

The Q Mark for Hygiene and Food Safety

The Q Mark for Hygiene and Food Safety is a business excellence standard that reviews all aspects of a company’s performance and commitment to hygiene and food safety on an annual basis. The Q Mark for Hygiene and Food Safety is aligned to the latest Irish, European and International standards. It is recognised by the FSAI (Food Safety Authority of Ireland) and SafeFood. The standard has been endorsed by the EOQ (European Organisation for Quality).

Benefits of holding The Q Mark for Hygiene and Food Safety Programme and Certification

The Q Mark for Hygiene and Food Safety gives you third party certification from the National Quality Organisation (EIQA – The Guardians of The Q Mark) which enhances your client’s confidence in all aspects of your businesses processes, procedures and resources. (Current consumer recognition of The Q Mark stands at 87% – September 2012, Ireland)
The Q Mark ensures that you are fully conversant and compliant with all relevant legislative and regulatory controls, and gives your team a framework which encourages them to operate to the highest operational standards.
The Q Mark identifies what is working for you and what’s not working for you, at ALL levels within your business.
The Q Mark gives you competitive advantage by demonstrating your organisation’s commitment to the highest standards of quality and excellence by using distinctive certification and marketing material based on the most widely used framework in Ireland.
The Q Mark enhances your opportunity at tender because you can demonstrate that your quality management system operates to the highest level.

What The Q Mark can do for Your Business

Increase your revenue
Increase your turnover
Increase your customer base
Increase your profit margins
Increase staff output rates
Decrease staff absenteeism
Decrease staff turnover
Improve your company’s processes and procedures
Improve your business efficiency

The Q Mark for Hygiene and Food Safety – The Only 100% Continuous Improvement Programme

During subsequent annual audits, all recommendations from previous reports will be assessed to ensure that every business continues to improve their standards of operation year on year.

Using The Q Mark framework ensures that a business has accountability in every part of their service, and whilst enhancing consumer and client confidence, it allows for easy preparation for any regulatory authority enforcement audits or visits. E.g. EHO, NERA, HSA, etc.

Who Should Apply for The Q Mark for Hygiene and Food Safety

The Q Mark for Hygiene and Food Safety is for all food related companies who want to inspect and improve upon on all aspects of their business, irrespective of whether they are involved in production or service delivery.

The Q Mark for Hygiene and Food Safety Framework Explained:

The Q Mark for Hygiene and Food Safety Framework can be overlaid on your annual business plan to ensure that 100% of your business processes and procedures are being monitored for best practice 100% of the time.

The Q Mark for Hygiene and Food Safety standard is based on four key elements, all of which are linked and all of which are underpinned by continuous improvement.

Continuous improvement simply means that there is an ongoing effort to improve products, services, or processes. These efforts can seek “incremental” improvement over time or a “breakthrough” improvement all at once.

The four key elements are:

Planning & Commitment
This element of the Hygiene and Food Safety Standard requires the development of policies and procedures to be communicated and implemented throughout the organisation. It requires the involvement of everyone, with a particular emphasis on the commitment and involvement of management. The consistent production of safe food under hygienic conditions requires the involvement of appropriately trained staff.
Performance & Review
Organisations that continue to perform well, financially and operationally, continuously review their own performance and that of their contractors and suppliers by conducting a planned programme of audits and reviews.
Approach
This element of the Hygiene and Food Safety Standard covers all areas of the food handling operations, with specific emphasis on the implementation of the organisation’s policies and procedures developed to comply with the Planning and Commitment element.
Structure & Services
This element of the Hygiene and Food Safety Standard outlines the specific requirements for the structure of the facilities as well as the nature and type of facilities that are required for employees.

Achieving The Q Mark for Hygiene and Food Safety

A company needs to score at least 60% in the four elements as well as a minimum of 60% of the points available within the Approach element to gain certification.

There are two levels to the scoring outcomes for the Q Mark for Hygiene and Food Safety.

Level 2 Sapphire is awarded to companies who achieve a score below 74%
Level 3 Emerald is awarded to companies who achieve a score above 75%

How to Apply for The Q Mark for Hygiene and Food Safety

Complete the on-line registration form Here
On receipt of your application and fee payment, you will receive your registration certificate from Excellence Ireland Quality Association (EIQA) along with your copy of The Q Mark for Hygiene and Food Safety Technical Standard.
Using The Q Mark for Hygiene and Food Safety Framework, create a checklist of areas in your business that do, and do not comply with the requirements.
When you are ready for your audit contact us to confirm a date to complete your audit.

The Q Mark team will be happy to support your preparation for your audit and will answer any queries that you may have about the requirements of the framework.

If you would like to compare your current operating standards to The Q Mark for Hygiene and Food Safety Certification framework, you can apply for a mock-audit. This is a full audit by an experienced auditor who will guide you through the process at a time and date that suits your schedule.

What our Customers say:

Our long standing involvement with the EIQA has helped us to drive our standards and has guided us in the pursuit of excellence in difficult trading environment.

Store Manager

We believe that this recognises our teams’ on-going commitment to delivering quality safe food, superior customer service and store excellence.

Forecourt Owner

It is a great achievement for the team and testimony that all our hard work and efforts at striving to obtain a higher level of HACCP is paying off.

Catering Manager

It is fantastic achievement for all our team to be acknowledged for our relentless hard work and dedication in obtaining continuous improvement in our food hygiene systems, our operations, our suppliers, our plant and our people.

Managing Director

Food safety management is an integral part of our business model. The Q Mark has been a very important marketing tool to our business over the years.

Supermarket Manager

This is a fantastic achievement for our business and we are delighted that the standards of hygiene and food safety that we continuously deliver are worthy of this prestigious national recognition.

Deli Manager

Our double national win last year was instrumental in the 10% increase our business has experienced in the past 12 months. The 3 most important things to our customers are Quality, Quality and Quality.