What are the primary differences between BRC and SQF?

Greetings.  I understand that there are some discussions on this in the forums but wanted to get an updated answer.

We are a BRC certificated company (Grain, Flour, Milled grains) for about 9 years now.  I realize that customer preference can be a primary factor in GFSI auditing standards. But what are the primary differences between BRC and SQF?

Thank you for your time.

Ben

HI Ben,

We've always seen BRC as being slightly "harder" or I should say more time needed to administer than SQF. There are some anomolies - but frankly few.

While the selection of a GFSI Scheme is most times based on customers we have found 100% of the time that a customer that wants BRC will gladly accept SQF and thus we stopped offering BRC consulting a while back.

We just had this come up with two new clients for developments, the customers wanted BRC and they decided to go with SQF and that was  100% fine with their respective customers.

Most times customers don't really know why they want one over another - all they really care about is their supplier gets GFSI certified.

Evaluation system is different. Seems (IMO) to favour SQF auditees.

Both Standards have their own quirks/nonsensicals, eg BRC for addiction to risk assessments, verbal complexities;, SQF for Validation, failures to update some errors after a decade. All elaborated in many previous threads.

Practical audit consequences maybe also related to risk status of audited Facility.

Thanks much Glenn!

Evaluation system is different. Seems (IMO) to favour SQF auditees.

 

Both Standards have their own quirks/nonsensicals, eg BRC for addiction to risk assessments, verbal complexities;, SQF for Validation, failures to update some errors after a decade. All elaborated in many previous threads.

 

Practical audit consequences maybe also related to risk status of audited Facility.

BRC definitely loves risk assessments; there are over 30 required RAs if I recall correctly.