Hello everyone!
I've just begun a position as a compliance specialist after spending 4 1/2 years as a tech (just under 3 as a lab tech, just under 2 as a QA tech). I feel my skills and knowledge are very under qualified for my role, and I'm hoping that I can pull from all of the knowledge from this community (pretty excited about it!). Also I'm 9 days in, my manager has been out last/this/and next week, and the day he gets back we have an organic audit, an internal audit the day after, and SQF 4 weeks after that. I'm only panicking slightly on the inside.
I'm trying to take as many courses/training as I can, but I was really left with only a bunch of spreadsheets to review the next three weeks, and not a lot of guidance. Any suggestions on training/classes is appreciate. I've got two questions also:
1. I'm trying to gather organic certs for our raw materials, and I don't know what is/isn't current/acceptable. I'm seeing organic certificates never expire, but they do have "anniversary dates". Wouldn't we need up-to-date certs with future anniversary dates? I don't exactly trust a cert with a 2012 anniversary date (I was barely out of high school).
2. We've put together an updated food defense plan using the FDA builder, and I have the task of updating our posted FDP for review. The document currently posted is a food defense/site security policy. I think I'm replacing these with the food defense plan, but the policy is a completely different doc (although I think it was put together prior to having the FDP). Does anyone know if having a separate policy is a necessity, or is the FDP typically all that's required? I should add we're transitioning from SQF to FSSC 22000 next year.