Hi All,
I recently started at a new facility and we are planning to add SQF for our next audit, however one issue keeps concerning me in particular regarding the food defense plan:
We have a fenced yard behind our facility for ingredient & product storage (sealed tanks and drums). However, the yard runs right up to the neighbors manufacturing plant, where we use the neighbors wall as our far wall for the yard
However at some point, the neighbor had an issue with the fire dept. and lack of fire doors and ended up building a fire exit through their wall and into our yard. So if there were a fire, their employees would exit into our yard. Unfortunately, this means that we have a back entrance into our yard, and someone could theoretically enter our yard through this backdoor.
We have a camera on their fire exit (is this sufficient?) and we can implement training for what to do if someone comes through the door. We have considered installing an fence, but the neighbor obviously opposes any plan to restrict their fire exit (not to mention our potential shared liability if the fence ends up contributing to any deaths in the event of a fire).
If anyone has some thoughts on how to address this during a SQF audit (or even FSMA), please let me know. This has been a real head scratcher.