Warehouse Food Safety Certification in the United Kingdom?
Hi Everyone-
I'm based in the USA and working on a project in the United Kingdom. Can anyone tell me if there are food safety certifications that warehouses provide when storing food/beverage products?
You can search both BRC and SQF for certified warehouses anywhere in the world
Thanks for your response. Can you tell me if there is a requirement in the UK to have a food safety certificate for warehouses that store food and beverages?
Thanks for your response. Can you tell me if there is a requirement in the UK to have a food safety certificate for warehouses that store food and beverages?
There is no formal requirement for third-party certification for food warehouses, or indeed for food businesses in general, in the UK.
If you're looking for some kind of third party assurance for a site that isn't certified then your bets bet is probably asking for a copy of their latest Environmental Health inspection report
Hi,
You do not need certification (unless your clients demand it), but food manufacturing and storage sites are legally required to be registered with the local Environmental Health authority. And as Andy said, it is a good starting point to ask them for a copy of the latest EHO report and whether they are certified to any GFSI standard and if yes - request a copy of their certificate and a copy of the latest report.
If you're looking for some kind of third party assurance for a site that isn't certified then your bets bet is probably asking for a copy of their latest Environmental Health inspection report
There are a number of food safety certification schemes in the UK, in addition to BRC there are non GFSI options. Micron2 (STS) Storage and distribution standard which was put together to meet NHS supply chain requirements and is UKAS accredited, SALSA (Small and Local Supplier Approval) and BRC Start. I work with a number of smaller food S&D sites and last year, following the update from Issue 3 to Issue 4 BRCGS standards, made the move away from that to the Micron2 certification option. These still cover all legal food safety requirements but are less onerous on the corporate front (i.e. annual management reviews, monthly operational, food safety culture, objectives). While these may be practised, where you have smaller businesses with an average of 30 employees and no in house technical resource, effectively resourcing & managing these requirements of the BRC standard may become an issue.
Unfortunately, many local authorities are short staffed and EHO's tend to focus on the catering businesses in their area rather than the storage and distribution sites, which they consider to be low risk, so you may struggle to get copies of local EHO reports where businesses have been operating for a number of years.