9 replies to this topic

[The Food Nerd]

The weights for the scales have not been calibrated for over 2 years, he let them calibrate them day after he found they couldn’t present any record. And didn’t write any finding for it. I’m shooketh by how lenient he was. Dare I say, appalled.

[Scampi]

Please do add more fuel to my inferno of rage re: GFSI as the be all and end all for food safety!!!!!!

 

 

BTW-is this your facility?  If so, how did you not catch this?

[Setanta]

What GFSI do you use? 

Edited by Setanta, 19 April 2024 - 02:33 PM.

[The Food Nerd]

Sorry guys I didn’t explain. I’ve shared in other posts the bigger picture at this location. I am technically not the QA manager. My boss is. But when I came here I realized I’m the only PCQI and HACCP certified individual. I was hired to do this in particular.
I catched a million other things but it’s basically a big spider web that I don’t think can be untangled with the current illogical ego of management that is present. To be completely honest, after reviewing a QC calibration SOP back in November, I went and checked records and realized QC here only refers to the lab area. So calibration for any other instrument used in production was not being done by QC. I went and checked with production and they confirmed that they don’t calibrate scales. This was back in November. Again, I was shooketh. So we talked about it, never mind writing a corrective action because as I said it’s a big spider web that cannot be untangled with QC/QA. It’s basically a huge battle of ego here.
Long story short, they started calibrating back in November, but i left the rest to them because one again, ego.
This was truly one of those things where I had to say, let them find out during the audit.
And now I’m even more shooketh that the auditor was so lenient. They passed. NSF was cb. Ansi 455-2 certication.

[The Food Nerd]

I am honestly questioning the integrity of NSF at this point.

[Scampi]

run                            away

 

NSF is a BUSINESS  in it to win it                           

[The Food Nerd]

I appreciate that scampi. I mean technically my work here is done. I will say I was able to improve food safety here. And I improved the But I don’t think worthy of a pass. Am I wrong for feeling like I failed consumers?

[Brothbro]

Am I wrong for feeling like I failed consumers?

 

I wouldn't be too hard on yourself, you can't place responsibility for the entire company's commitment to food safety/quality squarely on your shoulders. You aren't even the top QA person on-site either. But you are right to worry about your future at the company if you aren't seeing any commitment out of them. In your situation, most people would be working to improve what systems they can while looking to move to another company. 

 

Auditors can have a lot of different philosophies when it comes to plants that are obviously lacking in some areas. It's difficult because like others have mentioned, CBs are businesses so they're incentivized to keep customers on their certification year-to-year. If a manufacturer's customers will accept any GFSI cert, a facility that fails one (ie NSF) may opt to seek an "easier" CB rather than work on their non-conformances. This could in theory create a "race to the bottom" kind of mentality where CBs are incentivized to be a little lenient towards facilities to ensure they don't just drop certification when presented with a laundry list of CBs.  Auditors get kind of caught in the middle on this. I think the real problem here is the miss-match between the philosophies behind successful business and successful food safety.

[Scampi]

You're not a failure, and you feeling like your not worthy of a pass simply means that your work matters to you, which is a good thing

 

There is too little oversight on auditors IMHO

 

Take heart, you're not the only one coming out of an audit scratching their head wondering what the heck happened

 

We have the opposite problem here, completely convinced that the auditors need to "find" non conformances because what we have received in the last 3 years are laughable and a real stretch to the code, whereby a minor (very very very) thing will be corrected during the audit, and that still gets recorded as a non conformance.  My feeling is since the audits are supposed to drive continuous improvement, at some point your system really is going to be as good as it gets, but the GFSI scheme still needs to be justified

 

From a pure food safety standpoint, 3rd party audits paid for by the company being audited, for no other reason that to obtain/retain market share are doomed to fail every time

 

My regulator, would never ever issue a non conformance for the items the SQF auditor reported

[FSperson900]

I had this same issue at my last audit at the place i had recently joined. I found that no PMs had been done for half a year and all they had was an outdated schedule before that, no procedures. I tried correcting this (still to this day) with no cooperation. The auditor was happy to see an initialed schedule from the first half of the year. It even had equipment marked as pmed that didnt exist. So i just sat there horrified. Oh but i was tortured over my mock recall because it had too much info and the auditor got mad at that. (Not nsf though)