ISO 22000 or BRC Certification

Hi all

I work in a very small dairy and we are looking to upscale our accreditation from SALSA to either ISO 2200 or BRC. I would be grateful for any comments on the pros-cons of both and which one would be most suited for the future? Are there differences or would blue chip customers accept one or other?

hopefully you can help me make the right informed choice.

thanks
Justin

I would probably recommend BRC. Can you tell us who your customers are - UK only, Export only (where), both? Also are your customers in the retail supply chain?

If you can provide some more details I would be more confident in making a recommendation on which standard to choose and why.

Regards,
Simon

Thanks Simon

We would be mainly supplying either UK food factories as an ingredient or direct to retail. We do very rarely export to Japan although they are not insisting on ISO.

Would ISO be accepted instead of BRC?

regards Justin

Based on your customer portfolio I would definitely go for BRC Justin.

Regards,
Simon

Dear J Young,

If you want to see some of the differences, can find useful discussion/links in these threads (and others in the miscellaneous standards forum)-

http://www.ifsqn.com...dpost__p__22111

http://www.ifsqn.com...dpost__p__34114

One obvious implementation difference will be seen after you study the standards -
ISO 22000 requires extended knowledge regarding HACCP related material due to the re-focused philosophy in the standard. Whether this change ultimately has any operational benefit to the user is a matter of (various) opinion(s), it has certainly succeeded in generating confusion probably out of all proportion to the intended significance.

As implied by Simon, BRC and the GFSI associated standards originated through customer driven scenarios, the first esp.from UK whereas ISO 22000 is a relatively "independent" proposition although the latter characteristic is now becoming debatable following the modifications enforced on it vis GFSI acceptability criteria, eg PAS effects.

Rgds / Charles.C

Decision for a reasonable Certification Scheme mainly depends on following factors:
1- Customer/Regional demand.
2- Comprehensiveness of standard.

Inline with first factor, since BRC is more demanding standard esp. in UK and European region, a retailer of this region would obviously prefer BRC Certification.

Inline with second factor, IMEX, BRC is more comprehensive than ISO 22000. It has included almost all aspects of ISO 22000 and ISO 9001 (QMS).

Regards:
Zeeshan.