5 replies to this topic

[Sparkle27]

Most of the food that we deal with are imported. Say if we bought our eggs from a Supermarket (eggs are imported), do we need to audit the Supermarket? And how do we do it?

[SQFconsultant]

Supermarket is a pass-thru. No, you would not audit the supermarket.

 

When you purchase you normally buy from supplier - as in the supplier/producer that has the hens that lay the eggs - you would audit that facility.

[Sparkle27]

Thank you Glenn. 

 

I heard a lot on Supplier's Audit and it keeps me wondering as a Quality Assurance personnel we should carry out.

 

Our so-called suppliers are middle men/cold storage/distributors/market. We do not buy directly with the suppliers. So is it safe to say we do not need to do Supplier Audit as long as we have all the Certificate of Analysis or letter of guarantee in hand?

[pHruit]

This will depend on a number of factors - perhaps most significantly:

1) Are you working towards a specific food safety certification standard, and/or a customer with their own specific standards? Some of these mandate specific requirements on assessing the "manufacturer" rather than the supplier, where the latter is not actually processing the product.

2) How do you know the ingredients are safe, meet legal requirements etc? You could assess the various middlemen to determine whether they have suitable controls for their suppliers - the actual producers of the foods - as without that you don't really have any way of knowing how safe the ingredients you're buying are (or possibly aren't). It may be that they aren't doing much/any supplier assessment of their own, in which case you can't really have a great deal of faith in the ingredients they supply you unless you take further action to assess them yourselves, for example by doing an initial document review of the actual manufacturers - do they have any GFSI-benchmarked certification etc.

If this also doesn't provide a great deal of assurance then you may need to consider auditing the manufacturing sites yourselves.

[Pava]

Well, Many organizations in today's world have middle men / Traders  as their suppliers. In case if you want to audit them from a Food safety perspective I suggest you to audit the Traders and incase if the traders can help you to get access to the direct manufacturers you can audit them in coordination with the traders. 

 

Thank you Glenn. 

 

I heard a lot on Supplier's Audit and it keeps me wondering as a Quality Assurance personnel we should carry out.

 

Our so-called suppliers are middle men/cold storage/distributors/market. We do not buy directly with the suppliers. So is it safe to say we do not need to do Supplier Audit as long as we have all the Certificate of Analysis or letter of guarantee in hand?

[SQFconsultant]

You would audit the middle-businesses - cold storage, etc. When dealing with brokers for instance where they don't store product you normally would do documentation audits to ensure they have programs in place for their suppliers to follow etc.  It's like checking their approved vendor programs.  

 

Word of caution - I don't see that many brokers that have their food safety programs in place and/or in effect.