Hi, we just had our first desk audit. We received a couple of "major" non-conformances and some "minor" non-conformances. Most of them, whether major or minor, are going to be easy fixes but there is one program, environmental monitoring (EMP), that we as a company simply chose not to implement. It was deemed a "minor" non-conformance by the auditor. What I am wondering is whether or not the the site auditor will judge it as a minor or a major. Does the site auditor have the leeway to upgrade that from minor to major? I'm not sure how the rationale works when it comes to the auditor choosing minor or major. From our report it seems that our desk auditor used the term mandatory to determine how to ding us. On any mandatory program, any minor discrepancy resulted in Major's, however, we had a couple of non-mandatory programs missing altogether and they were only recorded as minors. In summary what I need to know is; if we choose to continue without an EMP will the next auditor have the authority to ding us as a major instead of a minor? For context- our rationale behind this decision is that EMP is a verification activity to verify that RTE product is being protected from cross contamination from the raw side and or environment. We do not produce any RTE foods, it is still raw when it leaves here. FDA requires only requires EMP for RTE areas.