9 replies to this topic

[Madam A. D-tor]

Dear all,

I am not familair with the AIB certification/approval. I have heard of it and I always thought that is was harder then BRC.
Today I am auditing a service provider, which is involved in cleaning nuts (sort out physical contamination through laser or through LIR.
The company has been approved/certificated AIB for some years. They will not pass BRC initial audit.
The organisation states that the AIB audit is only a check of prerequisite, GMP and process control in production. Is this true? Are there no documentatio nrequirements in AIb (HACCP plan, analyse plan, maintenance plan, recall plan, procedures, etc)

[tsmith7858]

Dear all,

I am not familair with the AIB certification/approval. I have heard of it and I always thought that is was harder then BRC.
Today I am auditing a service provider, which is involved in cleaning nuts (sort out physical contamination through laser or through LIR.
The company has been approved/certificated AIB for some years. They will not pass BRC initial audit.
The organisation states that the AIB audit is only a check of prerequisite, GMP and process control in production. Is this true? Are there no documentatio nrequirements in AIb (HACCP plan, analyse plan, maintenance plan, recall plan, procedures, etc)

Perfect timing, I am sitting in an AIB audit right now and we are going through our system. I attached the english version but there are other languages availalble at aibonline.org

Having also gone through a BRC audit as well as ISO 22000 and FSSC 22000, I would say that if properly applied and audited the AIB standard will give a good base but not all of the details required in BRC.

The first part of an AIB audit is more of an inspection. They walk the plant and make observations based on the standard (mostly GMP, building structure and pest). The second part is a complete review of systems and as you will see in the standard it covers HACCP and recall. Our auditor reviewed our HACCP plans yesterday including validation information.

Today we have been focused on Section 5 which reads a lot like the BRC standard if you look at it.

AIB does not have any specific documentation guidelines but without any documented procedures one would have a tough time proving what they do.

It seems a little strange that you would find that much disconnect and makes it seem like the AIB audit was not well done. Unfortunately that can happen as seen by the peanut recall issue in the US last year. AIB audited them right before they were shut down by the FDA.

We have a very good auditor that comes here and have always learned something from the process.

My AIB Auditor also does ISO and BRC and just reminded me that AIB also does not have any quality provisions.

Attached Files

•  Food Safety Consolidated Standards English Manual 2009.pdf   490.85KB   305 downloads

Edited by tsmith7858, 26 May 2010 - 04:26 PM.

[Charles.C]

I think from memory of their textual standards that AIB tend to be far less concerned with presenting an often unintelligible manual as is the case for BRC (IMO anyway ). This results in their audit being more focused on the practical aspects and less on the ISO type flimflam. They also seem to be much more documentation - transparent as to their expectations regarding the auditable requirements, more like SQF in that respect.
Nonetheless on the basis of having inspected one factory which was rotinely certified by them, I think Madame D-tor is probably correct that their appraisal is generally less deep ("vicious?") than BRC. Regardless, I believe their certification is highly regarded in the baking industry.

Rgds / Charles.C

[Madam A. D-tor]

Perfect timing, I am sitting in an AIB audit right now and we are going through our system. I attached the english version but there are other languages availalble at aibonline.org

Hi Tsmith,

Thanks for the document. I just red through the standards. It seems to me that this standard is both more detailed and more practical.
It gives more practical directions, where BRC and IFS let you free to implement one system or another. First I thought that there were less risk assessment requirements but [CTRL] [F] gives a few results on this search item.

It seems a little strange that you would find that much disconnect and makes it seem like the AIB audit was not well done. Unfortunately that can happen as seen by the peanut recall issue in the US last year. AIB audited them right before they were shut down by the FDA.

Please take my excuses. I did not mean to say that the audit was not well done. I just was curious for the standard. I have no experience with this standard and ( I do not know why) had always presumed it was a standard which was strict and hard to achieve. Now this customer was telling me that the audit is more focussed on the processes and have hardly no document or managemen requirements. This seemed really strange to me. Now, after reading the AIB standard I know that my customer was wrong.

I would not say that the audit was not properly conducted. I do not know how long ago the audit has been conducted. Today the same customer told me that a AIB audit is planned for the next month.

We have a very good auditor that comes here and have always learned something from the process.

Wonderful to have a good auditor. Try to keep him. It is always nice if there is a good contact between auditor and auditee and both are still learning during the audit processes.



Just to get rid of my frustrations: I finished the audit today and it is a new record: 2 Fundamentals, 17 majors and 21 minors for BRC! I have not even count the deviations and non-conformities for IFS. It seemed that the company was not ready for certification at all. They use to be certificated against ISO 9001, but the certification stopped in the beginning of 2008. Not only the certification, but also the maintaining of all the implemented procedures. After 2007 there have been no MR, no internal audits, no trend analyses, no supplier evaluation, etc. It was a reallly strange audit.

[Charles.C]

Dear Madam A. D-tor,

I believe the situation you have just described is known in the trade as an "easy rejection".
I do hope that you / yr company receive payment for all yr hard work.

Rgds / Charles.C

[tsmith7858]

Just to get rid of my frustrations: I finished the audit today and it is a new record: 2 Fundamentals, 17 majors and 21 minors for BRC! I have not even count the deviations and non-conformities for IFS. It seemed that the company was not ready for certification at all. They use to be certificated against ISO 9001, but the certification stopped in the beginning of 2008. Not only the certification, but also the maintaining of all the implemented procedures. After 2007 there have been no MR, no internal audits, no trend analyses, no supplier evaluation, etc. It was a reallly strange audit.

Sounds like a rough audit (we were disappointed when our BRC auditor came up with 6 minors!). Seems like more of a commitment issue than anything. I would guess that unless they pull things together in the next month they will also struggle with an AIB audit.

Having been through multiple audits on various standards, I would not say any of them are "easier" than others. You either have the systems in place or you don't. If you have them in place you can successfully navigate any standard. If not, you get finding like yours.

We passed our AIB audit with a Superior rating which makes our third straight Superior, all unannounced and occuring twice a year.

[Simon]

We passed our AIB audit with a Superior rating which makes our third straight Superior, all unannounced and occuring twice a year.

I think it's time you put yourself forward for a raise TS.

[johanelmander457]

Hi



I found that a member asked same question in this forum some months ago.



Pls use search box to find this questions with comments

[garrygh]

Perfect timing, I am sitting in an AIB audit right now and we are going through our system. I attached the english version but there are other languages availalble at aibonline.org

Having also gone through a BRC audit as well as ISO 22000 and FSSC 22000, I would say that if properly applied and audited the AIB standard will give a good base but not all of the details required in BRC.

The first part of an AIB audit is more of an inspection. They walk the plant and make observations based on the standard (mostly GMP, building structure and pest). The second part is a complete review of systems and as you will see in the standard it covers HACCP and recall. Our auditor reviewed our HACCP plans yesterday including validation information.

Today we have been focused on Section 5 which reads a lot like the BRC standard if you look at it.

AIB does not have any specific documentation guidelines but without any documented procedures one would have a tough time proving what they do.

It seems a little strange that you would find that much disconnect and makes it seem like the AIB audit was not well done. Unfortunately that can happen as seen by the peanut recall issue in the US last year. AIB audited them right before they were shut down by the FDA.

We have a very good auditor that comes here and have always learned something from the process.

My AIB Auditor also does ISO and BRC and just reminded me that AIB also does not have any quality provisions.

[garrygh]

Thank you for such a clear and insightful comparison.