Is it a Requirement to Audit Suppliers?

We are in the process of getting BRC certified at the end of the year. We are a small poultry plant. My question is on Supplier Approval. Do we need to actually audit our suppliers by going out to their facilities and make sure what they say they are doing is what they are actually doing or do we just send them a supplier questioneer to have them answer and use that.

We are in the process of getting BRC certified at the end of the year. We are a small poultry plant. My question is on Supplier Approval. Do we need to actually audit our suppliers by going out to their facilities and make sure what they say they are doing is what they are actually doing or do we just send them a supplier questioneer to have them answer and use that.

My plant earned an "A" last year and we do not audit our suppliers. We have a questionnaire and also require documentation such as Letters of Guarantee, Certificates of Insurance, allergen questionnaire, etc. Our Vendor Assessment SOP says that, in the absense of required documentation, we may need to do a physical audit. This seemed to be completely acceptable to our auditor. You may want to have a documented risk assessment to support your decisions for requesting certain documents from certain types of suppliers.

The Interpretation Guideline suggests a range of activities including a combination of: site audits, 3rd party certification (hint: GFSI), or completion of a questionnaire. From what I understand the questionnaire is a key element in most supplier approval and review programs.

If your supplier was approved based on the basis of a supplier questionnaire, the standard requires you to re-issue a fresh questionnaire once very 3 years (minimum) as part of a supplier-performance monitoring program. A yearly updated supplier approval / re-approval register should facilitate this requirement.

All you have to have a supplier control process and that process must be working. Ifyour suppliers are preferable GFSI certied then its much better. We rely on Supplier audit reports (full) which we analyse to ensure there are no outstanding food safety issues or their potentials and our program is in good shape