BRC NC supplier traceability
Last week we had a BRC food safety audit conducted and a non-conformance was raised as a raw material supplier approved by questionnaire hadn't had their traceability system challenged. I sent a traceability exercise to the supplier, however the supplier doesn't manufacture the raw material themselves, they purchase the raw material then re-pack the raw material prior to despatching out to their customers. What I received back from the supplier was more of a product recall exercise showing forwards traceability and mass balance but no backwards traceability like you would expect from of a manufacturer other than an incoming batch number and supplier code. When questioned on the backwards traceability element the old line of "our suppliers information is confidential was used". Any advice would be most welcome, as I feel I am going to have a battle on my hands to get the supplier to divulge any information relating to the manufacture of the product and traceability from the manufacturing site.
I had a BRC audit and got that same non-conformance for a label vendor. The company making the labels was very small and could not give me anything to show they tracked paper or ink that came in and used to produce our labels. It was very aggravating and in 3 weeks they still had not given me anything I could use for a corrective action. We were using another label company at the time that could show paper delivery since we were the only company they were using that size for printing our labels. I had to disqualify the 1st label company as part of my corrective action. If your struggle with this company is anything like the one I had, good luck! That was one of the craziest NC I've had to close.
Hi DB_84
The way I see it, your supplier is the last processor, so will be approved by you by a process that conforms to BRC requirements (e.g. has a GFSI certificate or has been audited by you). If they have a GFSI certificate, then their traceability systems will have been verified during their certification audit, so you should be comfortable with this (although not necessarily convinced). If they do not have a GFSI certificate, you will have tested their traceability system when you audited them as per the BRC requirements.
If they are BRC Agents & Brokers, V2 (which is now the standard) requires them to be open about the original processor to allow you to approve the processor.