HACCP raw material audit

Hi guys,

I am in the process of preparing to carry out an internal audit on plastic raw material procurement as part of our HACCP audit plan. Not having audited this subject before, can anyone give me some pointers/questions as to what I should be asking?

Dear Rosemary,

Do you mean in the context of (a) auditing supplier(s) or (b) with respect to the reception / handling at a factory or ??

Plastic used for ?? This will probably be relevant to "everything"

Are you auditing against an existing procedure or not ? Hopefully the former. ?

If there is no procedure, that is usually the first requirement.

And in the case of (a)(b) the next requirements are maybe to establish specifications / audit supplier premises, audit control procedures for reception etc. Was that the direction of yr question or something else ?

Rgds / Charles.C

Thank you Charles.
We are a thermoforming company so plastic film is our raw material. One of our CCP's is procurement of raw material. We have a quality procedure but nothing HACCP specific and I was looking for whether there is anything other than purchasing against specs or from approved suppliers I should be asking the purchasing department to prevent potential contamination to the final product which is primarily used in the food industry.

Dear Rosemary,

From what I've been through, there are few documents that need to be scrutinized before we pick a packaging supllier:
1. Specification
2. MSDS of the composing material, which also declare that the material is safe for food
3. The example of COA
4. Flow process diagram

I used to ask those documents to the procurement section before consider to approve it. Hope give you a little point through.


Regards,


Arya

Dear Rosemary,

IMO the HACCP requirements may be met through an appropriate product specification and an appropriate procedure for approving a supplier. However the word appropriate is usually the crunch factor. This may depend on country, regulatory factors, precise usage etc. I presume for UK the former is minimally required to meet some particular eu directive, migration data etc. and the latter will involves both an initial audit and an ongoing appraisal procedure, both directed towards BCP parameters as dictated by yr own HACCP plan. Presumably yr supplier has his own HACCP plan also (basic audit requirement ??)

There are a lot of "plastics" people on this forum (not myself) but they possibly need to see more details of yr current procedure(s) to enable significant comment ?? There are some sample HACCP plans on this forum for packaging producers but, from memory, these mainly concentrate on the process after reception of packaging raw material which I presume you hv already.

Rgds / Charles.C