BRC version 7 vs ISO 9001:2015

Hello,

Hope you can help me, we just had our first BRC audit and it went really well - we got AA, what we are extremely proud of. However some of our customers are insisting that we should have ISO 9001 as well.

I have tried to explain to the customers that BRC is globally recognised, really good food safety standard etc. but at the moment I haven't had much luck.  

So two questions really - how much would I have to amend the system to be able to obtain ISO 9001:2015 and how different is it comparing with BRC version 7?

Does anybody have any ideas how to change my customer mind?

Many thanks in advance

Maria

Hi Maria,

Firstly congratulations. You've done really well to achieve AA on your first audit; some companies never do that well!

It is important to realise that ISO9001 and BRC are two completely different standards looking at separate areas of your company. BRC is exclusively focused on food safety and cares very little on how your finance or IT systems work. ISO9001 on the other hand is looking at the whole organisation to see how well designed your policies and procedures are and how they are applied. While BRC wants to know that you deal with customer complaints in a food safe manner, ISO9001 probably wants to see how customer focused you are.

The two standards are complementary, not mutually exclusive. Many of my customers are both GFSI and ISO9001, and we are considering it. However, my concern is predominantly food safety, so I really only care about BRC/GFSI.