I think as was alluded to earlier in the thread, I'm getting increasingly doubtful of the value of audits, especially multiple audits. I work occasionally as an external auditor and I think I can sniff BS a mile off but one site I went into was SO good at stage management, they fooled me even though I'm in my third decade of this kind of work.
If you really want to lie and put effort into that lie, you will fool people. The originating site for the horsemeat scandal was audited successfully by GFSI and Tesco for example. Then the Peanut Corporation of America...
The way that audit companies fund their audits is to underpay their auditors meaning that the people recruited into those roles in the last 10 years often have little experience. One was proudly telling me of his 3 years in ready meals and that made him (as you'd say in the UK) "the big I am!" Some audit bodies (like AIB) don't pay for time when you're travelling. What this means is unethical practices creep into auditing or you either can't make enough money (if you're freelance) or you can't keep up with workload (if directly employed).
I don't do work for those kind of companies for a reason but behaviours I've seen on the "other side" include:
- Having 30 min - 1 hour per day on site doing some organising of notes (i.e. writing up on the job) or typing it in as the audit goes along not concentrating on the facts in front of the auditor.
- Finishing early in the day as "we've covered enough" but in reality that's so they can go back to their hotel room and get a decent amount of write up done.
- I even had one auditor audit a site I was in for red tractor AND a one day retailer auditor on the same day. I naively assumed she'd had that agreed then realised as she left, no... she will have been contracting separately and so charging separately!
- I even had the same red tractor auditor (just the one audit this time at a different site) never actually leave the office!
So do not assume that any audit is effective.
But I do stand by the comment re internal controls vs import. Especially in the US where it's at least hypothesised that levels of food borne illness are significantly impacted by infected handlers. With little safety net in the US for taking time off for illness, it can mean people work when ill. That combined with poor oversight and poor "muscle" for competent authorities in itself can mean the US is no better than any other country. Likewise the UK where I live has very much "three tier" food safety. Retailer branded foods have at least a level of strict control. Branded are so much less controlled then hospitality is mostly appalling in their controls.
Audits have their place but they're only really good at assessing if you have the right systems, not that the systems are adhered to day in, day out. They try of course by being unannounced, by looking at large volumes of records etc but it's just so easy to get round. Even with experienced auditors you can direct people to a degree. Then it starts to become the technical team job to pass audits not to make safe food as that's how they're judged. The two are definitely not the same.
I often quote I had 80 days of audits and customer visits per year in one job. With that takes about double on preparation and close out. That's more than a full time job. Imagine a world where that was, say, 5 days and that person was working on the behaviours instead?
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