8 replies to this topic

[Elengel]

We recently had a customer audit us.  She noticed that we do not have a grace period for our document reviews.  She commented some of her company's other suppliers have them (I don't know if they are GFSI certified).  Is this allowed in SQF?  Looking over the SQF code, it looks to me it is not but want to make sure.

[MDaleDDF]

I've never heard of such a thing.   FSSC has to be done annually, so if you want a grace period, make your review a ten month process, lol, then you have a two month grace period!

[SQFconsultant]

I don't know of any "grace period."

[TimG]

I also have not heard of a grace period. Could it be that you have a very strict "Will review X on X" procedure? Perhaps they are suggesting you loosen the rigidity of your own procedure?

Like MDale said, the requirements are that it's done annually. If you specify smaller windows in your procedure, you might be shooting yourself in the foot.

[Elengel]

TimG we just say we review our documents annually.  The customer auditor noticed we missed reviewing a couple of documents and made the comment about grace periods.

[Elengel]

Thanks everyone for responding.  This is what I thought but wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything.

[TimG]

  The customer auditor noticed ...and..... made the comment about grace periods.

 

Ahh yes, customer auditors. You are doing the correct thing by verifying before making any changes based on their comments. I got myself into the habit of saying "well thank you for that suggestion, we will take it under consideration." 

[G M]

Apparently you're exceeding the customers standards.

[GMO]

Can't say I'm that familiar with SQF but as a general auditing principle, if I think someone is going above the standard or tying themselves up in knots, I'll point it out.  If you ignore the SQF standard for a moment and the exact wording, does a full FSQMS documentation need reviewing yearly and if you did, will it make food safer?  I'm of the mind to think it won't.  There are systems (manual and electronic) which allow you to review a document without changing it which can be helpful but I wonder in most places where this happens how many times the document reviewer actually read the thing.