Organic Material - Inventory Discrepancies

Question for people with certified Organic experience:

We're operating a process where we buy an organic ingredient in large quantities (4000 kg), then consume them 96 kg/day. A lot lasts us ~6 weeks. Many times at the end of the lot, we end up with a relatively small discrepancy (< 0.5%) of the original lot weight. How would you handle and document this?

I've talked to our certifier, and although there isn't a hard and fast rule, he says that "reasonable" deviations are permitted. We use Oracle to track the lots, and between errors in the incoming weight, and the individual consumption, we're ending up off. I want to issue an SOP that instructs to accept a variance up to a limit (thinking 0.5%), with a documented transaction in Oracle noting weight variance, then get on with our life. Has anyone had issues with this?

You should have no issue with that.........shrink and yield should both be built into the BOM

When you write your SOP, double that to 1%, that way you won't be in deviation if you hit 0.75

I target 2% or less in trace exercises 

Hi LostInTheWoods,

Maintain a history of typical yields for incoming batches of your organic ingredient.

A discrepancy of <0.5% isn’t large and would only be of a concern if it was a gain.

You should be able to show based on historical use what is a typical loss for a batch through your process. You can then set limits when a yield is outside the norm.

Kind regards,

Tony