IFSQN Official Blog

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...

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...

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...

Finally, in May some food manufacturing facilities in Spain started to receive auditors again after the national lockdown was called off. The firsts audits during the pandemic have been more challenging than normal, both for the auditor and the auditee. Travelling and logistics during a pandemic  Mobility restrictions vary during the pandemic de...

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...

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. ...

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...

Most people would agree that electric cars are more environmentally-friendly than normal cars, but what if suddenly the traffic-lights didn’t apply for electric cars and they didn’t have to stop when the light turns red? Would people be comfortable driving in the traffic then? As a food safety auditor with more than 20 years in the industry, this is...

Why are customer complaint programs so essential in today’s food industry? While it is always better to catch and prevent hazards in-house than to deal with customer backlash later (or even find yourself sorting out a recall), most food professionals find that complaints are unavoidable. Whether your “customer” is the actual consumer or a client company,...

I work as a food safety auditor since more than 20 years. I started my career in Latin-America, and for the last 10 years I work in Europe. I have a scientific background with a PhD in Chemistry and over the years I worked with most standards and categories in the food industry. As a reader of IFSQN you are probably an auditee which means that you are on...