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IFSQN Official Blog > Free Food Safety Training Videos

Posted Simon on 14 March 2019 - 08:14 PM

IFSQN hold regular free webinar training sessions on a wide variety of food safety topics.  For your convenience we’ve compiled the video recordings into a handy Excel to make it easy for you to find what you need. The videos are free to access 24/7/365 days a year to watch at your leisure and share with your colleagues.  Happy viewing!
Simon...

Confessions of a Moron > Why did you hire me?

Posted fgjuadi on 04 March 2015 - 04:00 PM

Why did you even hire me?

I'm an expert. You pay me to give you input, and if you listen to me, you'll make better decisions. You hired me to evaluate the risks, give you potential solutions to minimize that risk, and monitor a program. Not to enforce it.

I understand you are a small family owned business. I know we're not going to be a fortune 500 comp...

FurFarmandFork's Blog > Document control – make it less of a chore and more of an asset

Posted FurFarmandFork on 07 August 2018 - 05:28 PM

When I first arrived at my current role, I had come from a 19-person QA department with at least one or two people dedicated each to a portion of our program. Now I was a one-man crew, but the SQF code hadn’t changed. I had to reexamine my interpretation of the code to focus on the basic requirements and how I would be able to meet them with whatever...

FurFarmandFork's Blog > Making sense of the SQF code: so what the heck is a “register”?

Posted FurFarmandFork on 21 May 2018 - 07:15 PM

SQF has a lot of special definitions and language that can cause confusion for companies working to get newly certified. There are several mentions of “registers”, but the word register isn’t ever defined in the SQF glossary. The short answer is that a register is simply a list of all materials supporting that section of the code. But again, SQF leav...

Tony-C's Blog > Using Trend Analysis to Reduce Complaint levels

Posted Tony-C on 09 October 2014 - 05:51 AM

I’d like to start off my latest blog by quoting an interesting section in SQF Guidance regarding complaints: ‘Customer complaints provide an important measure of how well the SQF System is performing. By accurately recording customer complaint types, a supplier can objectively measure changes in their management system and show improvements in a proc...

Tony-C's Blog > The Prerequisite Qualities of a Food Safety Leader

Posted Tony-C on 08 March 2015 - 03:38 PM

I want to start this month's blog by telling you a short story about a Technical role I was approached about a few years back. The offer was quite tempting and it was a similar role to the one I was in so shouldn’t have been too challenging (I thought to myself). I asked for more details regarding the role and I received a detailed job description. As I r...

IFSQN Official Blog > The Top 3 non-conformities in food fraud audits and how to fix them

Posted Simon on 12 January 2021 - 11:38 AM

Since the horse meat food fraud scandal in 2013, the GFSI standards have sharpened several requisites to push facilities to improve mitigation measures. It is well known that meat substitution is not in the top 10 of food products with most risk of adulteration or substitution. The BRC standard, already in V7, created new requisites (under the point...

IFSQN Official Blog > Top 5 HACCP non-conformities – and how to fix them

Posted Simon on 16 January 2020 - 08:37 AM

Why is the HACCP plan the food safety system for excellence?  For at least 50 years, HACCP has been the main protocol proven to adequately manage and understand food safety. When a recall or an intoxication happens, most of the times the root cause analysis was due to poor prerequisites implementation, rather than to an inadequate HACCP design. ...

IFSQN Official Blog > A recent case of deadly Listeria outbreak in Spain

Posted Simon on 25 November 2019 - 06:35 PM

For those of you who do not live in Spain here is the background. In August this year, Spain had a Listeria monocytogenes recall in thermal treated pork meat. This outbreak resulted in at least 3 pregnant women had to abort, at least two elderly people died, and more than 250 people were hospitalized. The product that they had consumed was a refrigerated...

Tony-C's Blog > Decoding Food Safety Validation & Verification

Posted Tony-C on 21 January 2015 - 07:29 PM

This subject of validation and verification is right up there in the list of food safety areas which cause the most confusion among members and the variety and often conflicting definitions and requirements in food safety certification standards as to what should be validated, what should be verified and what should be done to meet the criteria for valida...

Tony-C's Blog > FSSC 22000 on the attack in the GFSI Quality game

Posted Tony-C on 20 November 2014 - 07:24 AM

Last month FSSC 22000 announced its intention to add a module for the certification of Food Quality Management Systems based on ISO 9001. Certification should be available in the New Year.

In the announcement FSSC 22000 stated:

‘The addition will give organizations the possibility to be FSSC 22000 audited and certified for Food Safety and Quality Manag...

IFSQN Official Blog > Reviewing Food Fraud Vulnerability Analysis: Salt

Posted Simon on 29 September 2022 - 04:14 PM

It is well known that food facilities shall do a food fraud mitigation assessment. Several standards have their own guidelines, started by BRCGS already in its version 7. This version emphasized that the vulnerability assessment is a specialized form of risk assessment. Today it is used by most of the facilities to assess and evaluate the food fraud mitig...

mahantesh.micro's Blog > Covid-19 Outbreak & Preventive Measures at Work place

Posted mahantesh.micro on 30 April 2020 - 10:17 AM

What is a Virus?
Virus is defined as "Ultramicroscopic, obligatory intracellular paracites" which means they can not be seen through ordinary compound microscope and they cannot replicate or live outside the host cell. Viruses can only be seen through electronic microscope as the size of these viruses is very very small which is in the range of 30 nm t...

IFSQN Official Blog > Merry Christmas from IFSQN

Posted Simon on 23 December 2019 - 01:32 PM

A warm hello to all members of the IFSQN community wherever you are in the world. Once again, I’m dressed in my Santa outfit and that can only mean one thing IT’S CHRISTMAS!!! Today we’ll be winding down for a much-needed rest and to celebrate with friends and family. Of course, the forums will still be open, but it may be a little quieter than usual...

Confessions of a Moron > My Mechanics are Superheros

Posted fgjuadi on 24 February 2015 - 03:25 PM

My mechanics are my factory super heroes.

When something is wrong, when I need a corrective action, they're always the ones to help.

When my pet died and I found a hair on my sweater, who stopped me when I'm sobbing in the hallway to see if I was okay?

Maintenance.

When we evaluated the workstation and found poor ergonomic design, who fabricated a coo...

Tony-C's Blog > Emphasis on Integrity in BRC Version 7 Draft

Posted Tony-C on 01 June 2014 - 06:05 PM

BRC have issued a draft version 7 of the BRC Global Standard for Food Safety which has a strong emphasis on product and raw material integrity and authenticity, quite obviously a result of last year’s Horsemeat Scandal.

The scandal in which horsemeat was substituted for beef in a range of products caused uproar with the public particularly in the UK and...

Halal Food Manufacturing > The basics of Halal Food Manufacturing.

Posted Zeeshan on 11 April 2014 - 07:27 AM

Round the world people have many confusions over halal food manufacturing. Even Muslim manufacturer and consumers have contradictory views. Regardless of these confusions and contradiction there are some basics which must be considered by food manufacturer intended to comply with halal assurance requirements.

1- Knowledge of fundamental terms and definit...

Janette's Blog > Implementing SQF

Posted MQA on 17 December 2010 - 06:37 AM

SQF is an international standard of food safety and quality management systems.  Recognised by the Global Food Standard Initiate, the standard is an investment in benchmarking your business against the leaders of your industry.

SQF entails management commitment to not only conduct safety  practices of your product or services but also to ensure quality...

IFSQN Official Blog > Yes, Every Food Operation Can Use SPC

Posted Simon on 22 September 2020 - 08:13 PM

If SPC is not a term used by your quality department, it should be! SPC, or Statistical Process Control, is a data-based methodology for monitoring and adjusting operations in real-time to meet control standards. Not only is it a useful tool for optimizing your process, but it can also be the difference between success or failure in many of today’s audits...

IFSQN Official Blog > No Food Safety without Food Defense

Posted Simon on 08 March 2020 - 04:15 PM

It is common knowledge that food industry sees a high rate of employee turnover – both in the food service sector which sees up to 100% annual turnover1 , or manufacturing where labor shortages abound2 . This may give some employers pause when asked “do you really know the employees in your facility?” While in general, close scrutiny and quality assurance...