Food Safety Complaint Classification
Hi all
Good day!
We are a food manufacturing plant that is certified by FSSC 22000. In our plant, we classify our costumer complaints based on Quality and Food Safety incident.
For Food Safety based complaints, we consider direct contamination that may contribute physical, chemical and biological hazards regardless or not that it may (potentially) bring harm or injury to the end user. Recently, we have been challenged during audit whereby the auditor questioned on our FS complaints classification. Issues such as physical contamination (plastic wrapper, tape found in the product) or insect in the product may not bring any harm or injury to the customer.
We want to classify all hazards as food safety issues regardless of the extent or seriousness of the issue so that we are able to strengthen our control in plant. Or should we re-define the classification? How other organizations classify their FS complaints? How do FDA advice us on this classification?
Thank you for your input :thumbup:
Greetings Lechumi,
I am sorry, but you may want to ask for an auditor change. How does a physical hazard may not cause injury like choking or grazing the mouth cavity / throat if it is sharp? And how on earth an insect may not bring harm when they can carry parasites or lay eggs and they can be responsible indirectly for food spoilage? There is a whole special section in every standard imaginable dedicated to pest control and almost all food legislations worldwide consider pest control as a prerequisite in food manufacturing!!!
Your classification, at least on these two topics, is just fine and if he/she raised an N/C I would seriously challenge it back.
Regards!
Because I see the point here.
Glass or sharp metal.= Red. Risk is higher than say an insect or a piece of soft plastic.
Other physical contaminants could be orange.
Allergens also red of course.
Thoughts?
Hi Lechumi,
Welcome to the IFSQN forums
I understand the auditor’s comments but would argue the case that foreign body contamination is generally a food safety hazard where you could describe the affected product as unfit to eat, injurious to health or contaminated.
As a foreign body is present, even if it is not going to cause harm, this is an indication of problem and needs to be investigated in case something more serious and injurious to health ends up in the product next time.
I agree with AJL, categorising the complaints low/med/high risk is a good way to go.
Kind regards,
Tony
Thank you for the thoughtful input everyone :x_smile: Really appreciate. Btw, yes we do counter argued when the auditor challenged us for this issue. We said we are practising more stringent practise whereby all hazards are a big "NO" to be considered as acceptable. Maybe as per the comment, we can start off by categorising them like high/low/med.
Thank you again!
I agree. It's clearly a good idea to correct all food safety hazards no matter the direct effect on the customer. But by color coding the risks, you can make sure to accurately deal with the most dangerous issues first.