The main proposal of this research is to examine the existing literature on quality management systems and food safety management systems, and group, sort and prioritize the critical success factors that affect these systems in a global context, to help researchers and food industry managers in decision making and prioritization of actions in research and projects related to the topic. We conducted a quali-quantitative research based on a review of published papers about the subject in the last 23 years. The data were treated statistically, grouped and analyzed by the Nihans classification technique. The result led to the selection and prioritization of 14 critical factors of success for quality and food safety management systems.