How will SQF look at a Fermentation Tank Yard?

We are a fermented vegetable plant and have an on-site Tank Yard with about 300 open tanks for fermenting.  The FDA and State inspectors always consider our tank yard as agricultural but, I'm unsure how SQF is going to look at the tank yard.  We were informed that our tank yard will not be excluded from the audit and are wondering how SQF will look at it?  Does anyone have any suggestions or advice on how the auditor will address the tank yard?

They should look at it as AG, assuming of course that you have an added food sector category to cover this.  I take it your plant processes what the tanks produce. Thinking about a pickle plant that we were at - they had multiple food sector categories but in another posting of yours it seems that you have only one FSC, doesn't make sense to me. Just sayin'!

We get vegetables in from growers and dump them in our tanks and then they are fermented.  After fermentation the vegetables are brought inside the plant and cut and brined with acid, salt and sometimes preservatives or made into relish.  We only have 1 category our certification body put us in.  The Certification Body we went through originally put us in category 14 and now are changing it to category 18 after a review of our desk audit by their technical manager and we have to redo our desk audit.  What category would the tank yard be under then.  This is so confusing to me and is my first SQF Audit and our site audit is scheduled for May 9th and May 10th.

Take a look at the FSC listing that is in the code 7.2 manual and take a look at your operation. I'm not your consultant and have not seen your operation but it looks like it would be 2 and 14 & 18, fortunately that still equates to modules 2 & 11  -- you can confirm that by calling SQFI directly, they are quite helpful. Tell them your processes and see if they go with both 14 and 18 or just 18 - could be interesting.

We are ready for modules 2 and 11 already and had our desk audit I was just hoping with the category mix up that we didn't have to re-do the document audit and we were trying to exclude our tank yard from our audit.  The technical manager at the certification body we go through wants to now be our auditor and said he will not exclude the tank yard from the audit.  We are not sure on how SQF will look at our tank yard and are used the the state, FDA, and
Silliker auditors considering it is agricultural and they just walk through and that is it.  Seeing as how we are new to SQF and this is our first audit, I'm not sure how they will approach the Tank Yard and what rules apply to it for SQF.  Our tanks outside are open and need the sun to ferment and have wooden boards in them to hold down the product.  A lot of auditors and state, FDA inspectors have never seen open tanks outside and are surprised they are open.

We are a pickling process too and we are under Models 2 and 18 for the tank yard and the processing of those products. For the tank yard you need the to have your scientific lit. on the fermentation process and make sure everything is in good repair.

Sorry I meant Category 18. We are under Model 2 and 11.