Providing Customers with HACCP and Flow Chart?

Good Afternoon

We have been contacted by one of our customers wanting some information about the processor of the product that they buy from us.

They requested any accreditation certificates, HACCP and flow chart.

Am I correct in thinking that if I provide a copy of our processors BRC certificate, that should be sufficient?

Any thoughts appreciated.

Figaro

Hi Figaro,

Providing them the certificate will not give them the detail on HACCP and flow chart they requested.

Only your customer can answer whether it is enough.

Regards,

Simon

Hi Simon

Thanks for the speedy response.

I had thought that the awarding of the certificate showed that the processors systems were sufficiently rigorous?

The whole point being that if you had BRC accreditation you were 'fit for purpose'.

Figaro

As a minimum I request GFSI certificate, process flow and HACCP decision chart from my suppliers. I also request the GFSI audit report (I usually only get the non-conformance report, but it's good enough), I also want to see authenticity, heavy metal and pesticide analyses for the products supplied. There are other bits, but they're not essential.

We as a manufacturer will share the same information with our customers.

Thanks for the reply BJ, by requesting the flow and HACCP chart are you saying that the BRC audit is somehow lacking?

Figaro.

I wouldn't say it's lacking exactly, more that HACCP for juices is not the same as HACCP for RTE meals and thus we would like to be sure that it has been considered carefully. It's also the major focus of our factory audits. BRC is, by it's nature, general and we have specific requirements. BRC is a guide to how well a manufacturer considers food safety, but the auditors rarely come from a juice background, so we want to check. 

Fair point, I hadn't considered the implications from the point of view of different types of product.