Spence Hotels with a Southeast Asian first in food standards

Sri Lanka’s Aitken Spence Hotels Group is close to becoming the only hotel chain in Southeast Asia with ISO 22000 and HACCP certification audits, the latest international standard on food safety management systems.

Heritance Kandalama, The Tea Factory and Earl’s Regency have already acquired this distinction while other hotels in the group are in the process of conducting these certification audits.

“When the other hotels are also certified, we will have the distinction of being the only hotel chain in Southeast Asia to have this privilege,” Aitken Spence Hotels Managing Director Malin Hapugoda told reporters recently.

“ISO 22000-2005/HACCP preserves the quality of cuisine and this standard will gradually become the norm and finally a mandatory requirement for all food-handling operations globally and ensures high food hygienic standards,” he added.

He said that during the certification process the hotels exposed their entire food chain from the producer through the supplier to the consumer, in ensuring that high standards of quality and hygiene are maintained.

Ravi de Silva, Consultant Social and Environment for the company, said that effective interactive communications throughout the food chain downstream and upstream was developed to ensure delivery of safe food.

“A structural management system was incorporated into the overall operational management system, which has been aligned with the ISO 9001 quality standard. Based on these basic standards, the chefs with advice from SGS, the company which awarded the certificate, compiled their own quality and safety standards manual for their individual hotels. While most companies would seek assistance of the auditing company for the rules, Aitken Spence with its own staff took ownership and laid down the needed quality standards,” he explained. He said that the standards includes planning, implementing and maintaining a food safety management system, which will comply with all regulatory requirements, assess customer requirements, effective communication with the food chain, confirming to the food safety policies of the state, and demonstrate conformity to all relevant parties while seeking certification.

“All food handlers in the chain have been trained, while the other stakeholders are sensitised and their awareness enhanced. All stakeholders would play an active part in maintaining the standards,” he further added.