Food Safety & Quality
The management systems and laboratory standards our processing and testing partners work to. These sit at unit and laboratory level rather than with us, so the certificate that matters is the one naming the unit that produced your lot.
- ISO 22000 — food safety management systems, covering hazard control across the supply chain
- FSSC 22000 — GFSI-recognised scheme combining ISO 22000 with sector prerequisite programmes
- HACCP — systematic identification and control of food safety hazards on the line
- BRCGS Food Safety — the Global Standard for Food Safety, widely required by UK and EU retailers
- ISO/IEC 17025 — competence of testing laboratories — what makes a certificate of analysis defensible
Testing
Every consignment is analysed at an NABL-accredited laboratory and ships with the certificate of analysis.
The parameters below are the ones that actually cause rejections.
| Test group | What it covers | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Analytical & physical | Moisture, total ash, acid insoluble ash, volatile oil, crude fibre, bulk density, mesh size, colour value, active-compound assay (curcumin, piperine, capsaicin). | Defines the grade. This is what your process and your price were built on. |
| Microbiology | Total plate count, yeast and mould, E. coli, coliforms, Salmonella, Bacillus cereus. | Ground spices carry field microflora. Buyers with tight limits should specify steam sterilisation up front — it changes the price and the lead time. |
| Mycotoxins | Aflatoxin B1 and total aflatoxin; ochratoxin A on chilli and pepper. | The single most common cause of EU border rejections in this category. Driven by drying and storage conditions at origin, so it is controlled by buying well, not by testing late. |
| Pesticide residues | Multi-residue screen by LC-MS/MS and GC-MS/MS against EU Regulation 396/2005 MRLs. | EU MRLs are stricter than Indian domestic limits on several actives. A lot that is perfectly legal in India can be rejected in Rotterdam. |
| Adulterant screening | Sudan I–IV and Para Red on chilli; lead chromate and metanil yellow on turmeric; starch and foreign matter across ground lines. | Non-negotiable. A single positive result ends a buyer relationship and follows the exporter for years. |
| Heavy metals | Lead, cadmium, mercury, arsenic against Codex and EU Regulation 2023/915. | Soil-driven and origin-specific. Screened on turmeric as a matter of course. |