Sample Retention for an Agent/Broker Company

Hello all,

Thank-you for taking the time to read this post.

I work for a trading company that purchases food and feed ingredients from overseas to distribute throughout North America. I am working on setting up an internal grain/processed ingredient storage and testing facility but had questions pertaining to the retention time required according to a GFSI Standard, specifically the BRCGS - Agents and Brokers standard.

In practice, i'm used to retaining a products representative sample for the duration of it's shelf-life, plus 1 year - in a grain facility. As a broker, is it instead relied upon the manufacturer to retain it for that amount of time, or should we, as the broker, be retaining a representative sample for the same amount of time (shelf-life)? 

We want to, of course, retain our own samples for testing, but i'm at a loss currently as to how long I should be holding onto these samples before getting rid of them.

Would anyone have recommendations, or knowledge of this type of question?

Thank-you for all insights,

Gareth

Hi Gareth, under the circumstances it would apply to the manufacturer/processor.