The ISO 9000 series, which includes ISO 9001, was published in 1987. Society has changed a lot since then, with new needs and new debates. Today it is not enough to know that a product will be of good quality: we also want to be sure that the company maintains good standards of conduct towards its employees, its consumers and the environment.New demands, new seals and certificationsEnvironmental activism, pressure from groups opposed to animal testing and the growing consumption of vegan products created demand for new ways of proving how companies behave.Different types of seals for vegan / cruelty-free product packagingThe seals above appear on some beauty and food products. In the past it was common for cosmetics to be tested on animals before coming into contact with human skin; today there are alternative methods that make this kind of test unnecessary without giving up product safety.Note that these seals are not ISO standards: they are granted by independent organizations (such as Cruelty Free International or the Brazilian Vegetarian Society, SVB) and certify a specific characteristic of the product, not the company's management system. Even so, they show the same trend: the market, under pressure along the whole chain, starts to embrace these causes, and earning certifications encourages a "seal culture" that creates more conscious consumers and makes product choices more discerning.It was in this context that the need arose to go beyond quality management and create ISO standards for other subjects, starting with environmental management.A cosmetics company displays the seal of an independent organization certifying that its products are not tested on animals. What does this seal prove?Answer: That the product meets a specific criterion defined by the organization that granted the seal — seals such as cruelty-free or vegan certify a characteristic of the product and are not ISO standards; certifying the management system (quality or environmental) requires its own audit, against ISO 9001 or ISO 14001.The creation of the ISO 14000 familyThe ISO 14000 family was born in a similar way to ISO 9000. After the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio-92), ISO set up technical committee TC 207 in 1993, and in 1996 it published ISO 14001, which was revised in 2004, in 2015 (with the 2024 climate change amendment) and, most recently, in April 2026 (ISO 14001:2026, which incorporated that amendment; certificates under the 2015 version have a three-year transition period).The logic is also the same as for ISO 9000: there is no "ISO 14000 certification". The family brings together several standards (on auditing, performance evaluation, labelling, life cycle and so on), and only ISO 14001 contains requirements that allow the certification of an Environmental Management System (EMS).ISO 14001 – Environmental management systems – Requirements with guidance for use (published in Brazil by ABNT, the Brazilian Association of Technical Standards, as ABNT NBR ISO 14001) sets requirements for an organization to manage its products and processes so as to protect the environment, prevent the community from suffering from the waste generated, and meet its legal obligations. Thus, to obtain ISO 14001 certification, a company must meet requirements regarding its environmental policy, the procedures that allow it to identify, understand, manage and control the impacts it generates during production and use of the product (air emissions, liquid effluents and solid waste), compliance with legislation, among other points.When determining its environmental aspects, the organization may consider:emissions to air;releases to water;releases to land;use of raw materials and natural resources;use of energy;energy emitted (for example: heat, radiation, vibration, noise and light);generation of waste and/or by-products;use of space.Link to the ISO 14001 standard in PDFHere you can download the text of the ISO 14001 standard in PDF.A manufacturer wants to state on its website that it has a certified environmental management system. Against which standard is the certification audit carried out?Answer: ISO 14001, the only one in the family with certifiable requirements — ISO 14000 is the name of the family, not a certifiable standard; ISO 14004 is a guidance document, and ISO 9001 deals with quality management, not environmental management.The creation of the ISO 22000 standardEnsuring the quality and safety of food has always been a concern for producers, processors and distributors. For this reason, several countries and sectors voluntarily developed their own standards on the subject. There were already more than 20 different food safety standards in the world when ISO (International Organization for Standardization) decided to work towards a single one, accepted worldwide, which, besides ensuring food safety, would prevent the creation of trade barriers disguised as technical requirements.The publication of ISO 22000 – Food safety management systems – Requirements for any organization in the food chain, in September 2005, was ISO's response to the need to harmonize food safety concepts and to make processes traceable and under continuous management, with international recognition. The version in force is ISO 22000:2018 (in Brazil, ABNT NBR ISO 22000:2019), with the 2024 climate change amendment; a new revision is being prepared.Food safety failures, such as the case of the Backer brewery in Brazil, in developed and developing countries alike, have increased interest in prevention throughout the production chain. ISO 22000, drawn up by consensus among experts from the food industry and governments, harmonizes food safety requirements worldwide. Its greatest benefit is to offer a single framework, valid in any country and for any food, for implementing the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points system (HACCP), which we will study in a lesson of its own. The aim of the standard, therefore, is to guarantee the supply of safe food to consumers.The certified system covers the process steps within the scope defined by the company, with special attention to the Critical Control Points, that is, the points where there is a risk of food contamination that must be controlled. Employees must be trained in good manufacturing practices, which are a prerequisite for HACCP; then they are trained in HACCP and in the requirements of ISO 22000, since they will have to apply them in practice.The company's facilities must also be adapted, starting with good manufacturing practices. There are many requirements, such as not using wooden utensils in contact with food and installing screens on windows. Exactly what needs to change depends on the analysis of each process.In short, to comply with the standard it is necessary to implement good manufacturing practices and HACCP and to create a Food Safety Management System.Link to the ISO 22000 standard in PDFHere you can download the text of the ISO 22000 standard in PDF.A dairy plant already follows good manufacturing practices and wants ISO 22000 certification. What sequence does the standard assume?Answer: Use good practices as a prerequisite, implement HACCP and integrate everything into a food safety management system — good practices are the foundation, HACCP controls the critical points and ISO 22000 organizes both into a management system; ISO 14001 is not a prerequisite for it.Summary of the ISO standardsThere are many paths to quality. One of the most widespread today, to the point of being seen as a fashion given how widely it has been adopted all over the world, is the use of the standards of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as a tool to assure quality. To avoid the proliferation of different national standards, ISO set up a committee (TC 176) in 1979 to evaluate existing standards and, in 1987, launched the ISO 9000 series on quality systems. ISO 9001 was revised in 1994, 2000, 2008, 2015 and, most recently, in September 2026 (ISO 9001:2026).ISO standards require the company to keep its documentation available in an accessible, quick and easy-to-understand way, and the means of doing the work to be in line with the requirements. Following the same logic, ISO 14001 brought these principles to environmental management, and ISO 22000 was created so that there would be a single food safety standard accepted worldwide, avoiding trade barriers disguised as technical requirements.Checklists for applying ISOSome consultancies make checklists available to verify whether a company is applying the standard correctly:This is the case of Safety CultureOr the one by Cyro BarretoOr the one by ApopartnerOr the ones by QMS Brasil ISO 9001QMS Brasil ISO 14001QMS Brasil ISO 27001, on information securityThese checklists are quite broad and even abstract. There are two reasons for this: (1) each company will have its own adaptation, and a furniture factory cannot apply the same controls as an IT company; (2) the ISO standards themselves say what must be achieved, but not how, precisely so that they can serve organizations of any type and size. That is why a checklist helps with the diagnosis but does not replace the analysis of each process.Case studies on ISOThere are many case studies on ISO and the results it has brought to companies in various sectors. Let's take a look at some of them (all in Portuguese)?ISO case study in automotive companiesISO case study in an intervention project in the industrial additives areaISO case study in architecture firms
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