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Emphasis on Integrity in BRC Version 7 Draft
Posted by Tony-C,
in
Food Safety Standards
01 June 2014
·
11,653 views
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 Ireland. As Professor Reilly, chief executive of the FSAI, said "It is not our culture to eat horse meat and therefore, we do not expect to find it in a burger".
Horse meat is not a risk in itself; however, it may contain the veterinary drug phenylbutazone also known as 'bute' of which there is not a recognised safe level in meat for human consumption.
So while not a direct food safety issue, the scandal revealed a major breakdown in the traceability of the food supply chain. In the majority of cases there were opportunities for fraudulent activities as the meat went from Slaughter house to a Trader or several Traders, then to Wholesaler who supplied a Frozen food producer who in turn supplied Brand products & Retailer own label products.
One major food group involved claimed problems with horsemeat contamination of their frozen beef products, which were again supplied to brand owners and major retailers, stemmed from buying meat from Poland via a wholesaler. If you look up these incidents you will see manufacturer quotes such as 'purchased these beef products in good faith'. One wholesaler involved was quoted as saying that it purchased the meat ‘in good faith’ and was ‘shocked and astonished’ to discover that equine content had been identified in products they had supplied.
As one columnist put it ‘Long business supply chains are corruptible and can hide a multitude of crimes if no one checks for fraud or criminal activity.’
It is difficult to gauge how long this type of food fraud had been going on and the extent to which the food chain has been breached in the past. As an example in April last year Dutch authorities announced that 50,000 Tonnes of meat supplied by two Dutch trading companies and sold as beef across Europe since January 2011 may have contained horsemeat. Both companies were owned by one man who had already previously been investigated by food safety officials. In total 500 companies in Europe were affected by the discovery.
During and after the scandal the food industry, particularly retailers and brand owners took some big hits from the media. The BRC itself did not come out unscathed either: The industry has previously boasted that it has full traceability of its supply chain which it audits frequently. The current scandal shows that that traceability is not worth the paper it is generally written on. Most of the factories caught up in the scandal have accreditation with mainstream auditing schemes such as that run by the British Retail Consortium but it failed to spot the problem.
The BRC clearly do not want to be ‘shocked and astonished’ by a repeat and with this in mind seem to have a focus on authenticity and integrity. Nowhere in the draft version 7 of the BRC Global Standard for Food Safety can I find ‘in good faith’ which, although nice, doesn’t wash when there are unscrupulous traders in the food chain. There is clear intent though to minimise the risk of purchasing fraudulent or adulterated raw materials and ensure that all product claims, descriptions and labels are legal, accurate and verified.
I'll go into detail about some of the proposed new requirements in a later blog.
Update 15 July:
GFSI have announced the GFSI Guidance Document with be updated to include requirements to prevent Food Fraud:
GFSI Position Paper on Mitigating the Public Health Risk of Food Fraud
PARIS, 15th July 2014
'In order to ensure transparency, the GFSI Board believes that the mitigation of food fraud is an integral part of a company's food safety management system, and has therefore decided to include new requirements specific to food fraud mitigation in the next full revision of the GFSI Guidance Document 7th Edition which will be released in early 2016.
The Think Tank recommends that two fundamental steps are taken by the food industry to aid in the mitigation of food fraud: firstly, to carry out a ‘food fraud vulnerability assessment’ in which information is collected at the appropriate points along the supply chain (including raw materials, ingredients, products, packaging) and evaluated to identify and prioritise significant vulnerabilities for foo d fraud.
Secondly, appropriate control measures shall be put in place to reduce the risks from these vulnerabilities. These control measures can include a monitoring strategy, a testing strategy, origi n verification, specification management, supplier audits and anti‐counterfeit technologies. A clearly documented control plan outlines when, where and how to mitigate fraudulent activities.'
Source GFSI here
The scandal in which horsemeat was substituted for beef in a range of products caused uproar with the public particularly in the UK and Ireland. As Professor Reilly, chief executive of the FSAI, said "It is not our culture to eat horse meat and therefore, we do not expect to find it in a burger".
Horse meat is not a risk in itself; however, it may contain the veterinary drug phenylbutazone also known as 'bute' of which there is not a recognised safe level in meat for human consumption.
So while not a direct food safety issue, the scandal revealed a major breakdown in the traceability of the food supply chain. In the majority of cases there were opportunities for fraudulent activities as the meat went from Slaughter house to a Trader or several Traders, then to Wholesaler who supplied a Frozen food producer who in turn supplied Brand products & Retailer own label products.
One major food group involved claimed problems with horsemeat contamination of their frozen beef products, which were again supplied to brand owners and major retailers, stemmed from buying meat from Poland via a wholesaler. If you look up these incidents you will see manufacturer quotes such as 'purchased these beef products in good faith'. One wholesaler involved was quoted as saying that it purchased the meat ‘in good faith’ and was ‘shocked and astonished’ to discover that equine content had been identified in products they had supplied.
As one columnist put it ‘Long business supply chains are corruptible and can hide a multitude of crimes if no one checks for fraud or criminal activity.’
It is difficult to gauge how long this type of food fraud had been going on and the extent to which the food chain has been breached in the past. As an example in April last year Dutch authorities announced that 50,000 Tonnes of meat supplied by two Dutch trading companies and sold as beef across Europe since January 2011 may have contained horsemeat. Both companies were owned by one man who had already previously been investigated by food safety officials. In total 500 companies in Europe were affected by the discovery.
During and after the scandal the food industry, particularly retailers and brand owners took some big hits from the media. The BRC itself did not come out unscathed either: The industry has previously boasted that it has full traceability of its supply chain which it audits frequently. The current scandal shows that that traceability is not worth the paper it is generally written on. Most of the factories caught up in the scandal have accreditation with mainstream auditing schemes such as that run by the British Retail Consortium but it failed to spot the problem.
The BRC clearly do not want to be ‘shocked and astonished’ by a repeat and with this in mind seem to have a focus on authenticity and integrity. Nowhere in the draft version 7 of the BRC Global Standard for Food Safety can I find ‘in good faith’ which, although nice, doesn’t wash when there are unscrupulous traders in the food chain. There is clear intent though to minimise the risk of purchasing fraudulent or adulterated raw materials and ensure that all product claims, descriptions and labels are legal, accurate and verified.
I'll go into detail about some of the proposed new requirements in a later blog.
Update 15 July:
GFSI have announced the GFSI Guidance Document with be updated to include requirements to prevent Food Fraud:
GFSI Position Paper on Mitigating the Public Health Risk of Food Fraud
PARIS, 15th July 2014
'In order to ensure transparency, the GFSI Board believes that the mitigation of food fraud is an integral part of a company's food safety management system, and has therefore decided to include new requirements specific to food fraud mitigation in the next full revision of the GFSI Guidance Document 7th Edition which will be released in early 2016.
The Think Tank recommends that two fundamental steps are taken by the food industry to aid in the mitigation of food fraud: firstly, to carry out a ‘food fraud vulnerability assessment’ in which information is collected at the appropriate points along the supply chain (including raw materials, ingredients, products, packaging) and evaluated to identify and prioritise significant vulnerabilities for foo d fraud.
Secondly, appropriate control measures shall be put in place to reduce the risks from these vulnerabilities. These control measures can include a monitoring strategy, a testing strategy, origi n verification, specification management, supplier audits and anti‐counterfeit technologies. A clearly documented control plan outlines when, where and how to mitigate fraudulent activities.'
Source GFSI here
- cazyncymru and chilly like this
Thanks nice read. Do you think other standards will follow this like FSSC 22000?