What is the purpose having a specified "SQF Practitioner"?
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2.1.2.4 The senior management shall designate an SQF practitioner for each site with responsibility and authority to:
i. Oversee the development, implementation, review and maintenance of the SQF System, including food safety fundamentals outlined in 2.4.2, and the food safety plan outlined in 2.4.3.
ii. Take appropriate action to ensure the integrity of the SQF System; and
iii. Communicate to relevant personnel all information essential to ensure the effective implementation and maintenance of the SQF System.
2.1.2.5 The SQF practitioner shall:
i. Be employed by the supplier as a company employee on a full-time basis;
ii. Hold a position of responsibility in relation to the management of the supplier’s SQF System;
iii. Have completed a HACCP training course;
iv. Be competent to implement and maintain HACCP based food safety plans; and
v. Have an understanding of the SQF Code level 2 and the requirements to implement and maintain SQF System relevant to the supplier scope of certification.
2.1.4.4 The SQF practitioner shall be responsible for validating changes to food safety fundamentals and food safety plans that have an impact on the supplier’s ability to deliver safe food.
2.5.1.1 Validation and verification activities shall be the responsibility of the SQF practitioner.
2.5.1.2 The frequency and methods used to validate and verify food safety fundamentals, critical limits, and other food safety controls identified in food safety plans shall be documented and implemented and meet their intended purpose.
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I find this it is creating some confusion with new adopters of GFSI benchmarked audit standards.
So one can hire a "SQF Practitioner" that did not design a food safety system but merely orchestrates the SQF documentation requirements. If taken this way, it can create an tremendous amount of bureaucracy and redundancy.
Observation: I am seeing in the market (on the Nth American side), many, many positions for SQF Practitioner/HACCP Coordinator/Food Safety Document Specialists… all dealing with GFSI benchmark audits. As I see it, the big retailers are now suspending further business with suppliers who are not GFSI audited. Now that the American food packing/processing industry is under the gun, they are scambling. In that scramble, they just can’t pile more responsibility onto the QA Managers… so they hire a HACCP certified for SQF Practitioner/HACCP Coordinator/Food Safety Document Specialists…
The troubling thing with this is a 1st time facility bending to GFSI compliant don’t generally know quite how to deal with all of the document formation/retention/control and presentation (I am living it 1st hand). Thus they seem to end up creating a separate position that “makes paper safe”.
So, just think of SQF clause 2.5.1.1 & 2.5.1.2 requirements (given their guidance document) and the QA Manager is not SQF Certified… but they do have a separate “SQF Practitioner” just doing allot of redundant paperwork (I am trying to change this and simplify their SQF review method).
Has anybody else come across this?
Being a BRC guy, I just have not seen this phenomena. No "requirements", the QA Manager who designed the Food Safety System is the person responsible for adhering to the requirements of the BRC code. Simple, things are verified and validated (attesting to the integrity of a food safety systems) by qualified personnel and life goes on.
Cheers,
-B
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