5 replies to this topic

[Rassmutten]

We just had a perspective customer come in and do a mini SQF audit. They were extremely Indepth which is great even more so than most auditors. The one thing I did not agree with is their interpretation of the recall language. This company thinks that we should have people trained on all three shifts to do the recalls. We do not. We have never been held to that standard. What we do have are people on all three shifts that are able to retrieve data which give the management team time to get to work and do the actual formal recall. Has anybody else had experience with the code being interpreted in this manner? I would like some perspective. I am all for covering bases but at some point, it is overkill. I don't want an SQF Practitioner on each shift.

[SQFconsultant]

Not required, however may be something you will need to appese your customer on - not a bad idea to include a key person from each shift on recall training.

 

Now, outside of the recall thing - are you saying you don't have a backup SQF Practitioner available for covering on other shifts outside of your main shift when you have a key SQF Pracitioner in place?

[jfrey123]

Your night shift supervisor/managers should have some type of training to your recall program.  Program might need to specify that the crisis management team normally works during standard office hours, but the off-shift leadership is trained to notify your crisis lead if they're notified of a recall.

 

Say your night shift is on duty at 6am on the USA west coast but gets the call from a 9am USA east coast supplier that an ingredient is being recalled, night shift leadership needs training on how to identify and isolate the recalled ingredient in your own facility and that they must activate the crisis management program.

[Scampi]

Overreaching by the auditor---that is why there is a recall team, someone is available all hours

[Tony-C]

I'm with Scampi.

 

The supplier has emergency contact details, it is not the job of some bloke on the nightshift to instigate a recall and it would be madness to resource the site for 24 hours in case a supplier wants to recall something 'out of hours'. Nightshift can quarantine ingredients or products maybe as per control of non-conforming product.

 

Some sites don't even have a nightshift, that's why there should be emergency contact numbers. We used to have an emergency contact mobile for a duty senior manager to deal with incidents over the weekend so there was only one emergency contact number and the senior management were on a roster, say covering 1 weekend in 5. If there was a problem too big to be dealt with by the duty manager alone, other members of the team were called in.

 

Regards,

 

Tony

[TimG]

I agree with what people are saying, but Glenn hit the nail on the head with 'may be something you will need to appease your customer on.' This is either their interpretation of SQF requirements, or their internal requirements. If you want to get the prospective deal, you will need to approach this with less of a 'it's not in the code' and more of a 'how can we satisfy their request' mindset. The time for sounding out what the auditor wanted was during the audit. Did it seem like they would be ok with updating your recall plan to say 'x shift will be staffed with employees competent to do x'?

 

I'm all for pushing back on customers who have nonsense demands, but during the initial bid/approval stage you need to do this with kid's gloves.