Food safety won’t be helped by hygiene audits
Third-party hygiene audits are unlikely to pick up examples of food fraud that could potentially lead to safety issues, Karen Betts, compliance manager for the British Retail Consortium (BRC) Global Standards claimed in September.
Following the horsemeat scandal the BRC reviewed its audit scheme to determine whether it needed to change but decided against it.
“We decided there wasn’t a need to change the standard as such,” said Betts. “What we did was give guidance notes out to auditors about what they should be looking for in traceability. But fraud is an illegal activity and if people are hell bent on hiding things it is very difficult to pick that up in a standard audit.”
Dr Jo Head, an expert on meat hygiene, said there was potential to “bolt on a fraud module to the BRC Standard”.