Remote Internal audits and independent review by our food safety consultants

The current lockdown on us all, imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, has meant that some food businesses are short staffed and may be concentrating on other priorities, namely keeping the business strong and trying to continue with some semblance of “business as normal” in these unprecedented times.

 

The thought of performing internal audits or any kind of review and evaluation of quality and / or food safety management systems may be far from the mind. This is entirely understandable but there is a risk associated with the cessation of internal audit, review and evaluation. These risks could be summarised as:–

 

• Missed improvement opportunities – such opportunities may even protect or grow the business
• Raised costs of error and wastage
• Bad habits creeping in, unchallenged
• Rushed audits and review, when the current crisis is over, leading to error in the internal audit or review process and poor results
• Missed audits and review, which could lead to decrease in third party or customer audit performance

 

BRC Global Standards produce regular news and updates. This very subject has just been covered by them and you can read it here.

 

Please don’t hesitate to call our friendly, reassuring and expert team of food safety consultants if you think you would benefit from independent review of your quality or food safety management system. Much work can in fact be conducted remotely and we have already drawn up a procedure for doing so, which was discussed in a previous news article on this website, under the control of our own ISO 9001:2015 certified quality management system. You can read that here. We can help with:–

 

• Remote internal audits of system, procedure and records
• Assistance in the interpretation of clauses of the GFSI Standards such as BRC Global Standards Global Standards or FSSC 22000
• Assistance in designing and developing systems and procedures complaint with the GFSI Standards such as BRC Global Standards Global Standards or FSSC 22000
• Remote training on our own, bespoke HACCP, auditor and food safety courses, or on those produced by the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH). We are in receipt of and can follow the remote training procedure recently sent to all training centres by the CIEH, during this COVID 19 pandemic crisis.