Third-party audits under attack

The increasingly global nature of the food supply chain, together with the speed with which food safety incidents can spread around the world, poses problems for manufacturers when it comes to ensuring the safety of the ingredients they source and ultimately the products they make.

Past food safety scares, ranging from the Sudan 1/ Para Red carcinogenic food colouring contaminant incidents in 2005 to the Chinese melamine in milk contamination case in 2008 and nitrates in milk incident earlier this year, illustrate the speed and global reach of such problems.

As ingredients are sourced from a wider variety of locations by an increasing number of suppliers, the chances of food safety becoming an issue increases, says Liz Paterson, marketing director at laboratory testing and support services group, Eurofins.

As supply chains become more global, monitoring them becomes more difficult and the speed with which a problem can spread increases, she adds. Because of this, retailers have responded by imposing stricter audits on their manufacturing suppliers.

Third-party schemes​

Internationally recognised third-party certification schemes, such as the British Retail Consortium's (BRC) Global Standard for Food Safety, have become more widely used over recent years.

There are currently 12 different schemes primarily retailer led benchmarked by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI). The GFSI, which operates under the auspices of the international Consumer Goods Forum, seeks to achieve common quality levels of food safety certification among the different schemes it recognises.

However, as globalisation of food supply increases, there are growing concerns that the standards of food safety certification and competency of auditors that carry out third-party certification particularly in developing countries are not up to the standards required of developed countries such as the UK, says Vince Shiers, md of consultancy and training provider RQA Europe.

"When you source from far flung places, you're not always in a position to understand the processes and procedures in place in those factories much less the ones that supply to them,"​ says Shiers.

Increasingly, questions are being asked about the efficacy of third-party certification schemes. And this is forcing scheme owners and the GFSI to respond in an attempt to restore confidence among retail customers and others. Last September, for example, the GFSI set up a special working group to focus on issues of auditor competence.

The BRC standard is reviewed every three years and the sixth version will be released later this year. Its use by all major UK retailers and continued international growth prove that there has been no decline in confidence in it since the last review, says a BRC spokesman.

Paterson adds that issues also sometimes arise because of varying practices in different parts of the globe. For example, the use of different pesticides and fertilisers can lead to the presence of trace chemical contaminants that are not always tested for in Europe, she warns. In response to this, European legislation on residues is becoming increasingly stringent, she adds.

One of the criticisms levelled at global certification schemes, such as BRC, is that they are too general, says Neil Brown, technical director of specialist cleaning and hygiene service provider Hygiene Group. He argues that this is because the BRC standard takes a broad approach, encompassing both medium- and high-risk food manufacturing operations within a single scheme.

While retailers view the BRC scheme as a good entry-level assessment of suppliers' capability, a number are also imposing what they consider to be their own more stringent audits, he adds. Ironically, the BRC scheme was originally introduced with the aim of curbing the escalating number and cost of individual retailer-led audits on suppliers.

Critics argue that there is sometimes inadequate monitoring of certifying bodies (CBs), which are proliferating in number, together with the number of certification schemes. Third-party certification is too slow in responding to rapidly changing market conditions, claims Mike Law, chief certification officer at third-party CB Cert ID Europe.

Law says there are now more than 100 CBs worldwide that together have certified around 14,000 suppliers. This growth increases the risk of a bad auditor being approved, says Duncan Goodwin, director of technical services at consultancy and CB, NSF-CMi. Careful scrutiny of CB competence is also critical, he adds.

In defence of the BRC, Law argues that the BRC does a good job in monitoring its CBs. "As certification gets more widespread, it gets harder to keep a lid on the whole process and keep it consistent,"​ he remarks. "But the BRC has taken a number of steps to deal with any criticism and stay ahead of the game."​

Actions such as employing more compliance managers to make sure CBs are up to standard; setting key performance indicators; and suspending registered CBs that do not meet its standards all prove that the BRC is taking the issue seriously, he claims.

But, despite efforts by scheme owners to address concerns, it seems retailer audits will continue to grow in number not least because of the power this puts in the hands of the retailer. Food Manufacture has even heard cases of certain UK multiples using hygiene audits to exercise sanctions on suppliers to gain advantage in price negotiations.

On the other hand, retailers also have brands that they need to protect and suppliers that fail to comply with their exacting hygiene requirements will simply not be traded with. This is a sanction that BRC does not have, says Brown. "Purchasing power at one end leads to control at the other,"​ he adds.

Retailers also view stricter auditing standards as a good way of ensuring that manufacturers regulate their upstream supply chains, says Goodwin. "As retailers put increased pressure and focus on manufacturers they, in turn, have to place increased pressure and focus on their suppliers,"​ he explains.

Micro management of suppliers​

The problem for suppliers is that, because of the power they wield, retailers are increasingly demanding a greater say in and interfering with manufacturing operations themselves under the guise of seeking better hygiene, warns Brown.

While mandating the length of coat to be worn in a production areas might be understandable albeit bordering on micro management things such as stipulating that gutters in non-production areas must not contain moss, and barring coloured patches from the front of coats have little to do with hygiene, argues Brown. Yet, he says, firms have been audited on such matters.

For manufacturers to pass increasingly high standards of audits, they must have the correct systems and checks in place, says Law, together with the correct employee training to ensure procedures are followed.

But creating a culture of food safety goes well beyond passing an audit. Ensuring systems and checks such as a factory's hazard analysis critical control points procedures, traceability systems and staff training are appropriate can ultimately help to prevent costly product recalls, says Paterson. It also eliminates unnecessary testing, she adds.

Proper systems and checks, for example, can also help avoid allergen recalls, which last year formed the largest proportion of alerts issued by the Food Standards Agency. Having staff capable of properly executing systems and checks would allow a company to trace sources of cross-contamination, as well as mitigating incidents of mislabelling a major cause of recalls, says Shiers.

Mislabelling problems occur when recipes are updated and when ingredient suppliers change. If a system is not in place to automatically check for food safety hazards and update accordingly when such changes occur, manufacturers will be much more likely be the source of product recalls, adds Shiers. Goodwin agrees and adds that the increased complexity of products; use of novel ingredients; and adoption of novel processes by manufacturers make systems awareness and training for employees vital.

But, in the current tough economic climate, there is always a danger that training budgets will be cut, warns Catherine Watkinson, vice-chair of the Society of Food Hygiene and Technology. "Manufacturers have come a long way and it would be a shame if people cut costs now," she says. She also flags up the impending danger of fewer food hygiene graduates in the future.

While slashing training budgets might appear to be an easy thing to do, it could prove a false economy if a product recall results, Watkinson suggested.

Key contacts​


BRC 0207 854 8939


Cert ID 0167 547 5607


Eurofins 0845 604 6740


Hygiene Group 0800 731 4893


NSF-CMi 0199 388 5600


RQA Europe 0118 935 7242


Society of Food Hygiene
 and Technology 0182 787 2500