Quality and environmental managment systems are being used by many companies to improve their quality processes and to improve their environmental performance. The two main international standards for such systems are ISO 9000 (2000 series) for quality and ISO 14001for environmental management.

Often you may see the words "quality foods", although this usually means very little as the use of the word "quality" does not require the use of a quality managments sytsems like ISO 9000.

It has been recognised that these systems and standards can help organisations deal with relatively complex issues in a manageable fashion. There are moves to adopt these quality sytems to deal with issues of food safety and hygiene. There is international guidance for the food and drink industry to apply quality managment systems called ISO 15161.

Here we use the basic format of these quality systems - known as Plan-Do-Check-Act, and adopt it to deal with the many issues arising from sustainable food.

The Sustainable Development Education Panel have developed these systems to apply to sustainable development. They have produced a A Step-by-Step Guide to establishing a Sustainablity Management System, particularly suitable for colleges.

There is a forthcoming manual for those wishing to introduce better quality and more sustainable food and practices into the public sector, available from Sustain.

At present, there is no national or international standard, nor 'kite mark', for "Sustainable Food".

Here we use the outline of these managment systems in order to structure how you can respond within your organisation, using methids that should be familiar. We do not provide the detailed procedures, which can be written using existing managment systems applied to sustainable food process here.

NEXT Take the first step of the Sustainable Food Guide.....