BRCGS Food Safety Issue 9: What Auditors Look For

The BRCGS Global Standard for Food Safety is one of the most widely required certifications for manufacturers supplying retailers and export markets. Issue 9 put more weight on how a site's management and culture support food safety, not just on the documents in the quality manual. Here is what auditors concentrate on, and how to be ready.

Senior management commitment and food safety culture

Issue 9 expects senior management to lead a documented plan for developing food safety and quality culture, with defined activities, timescales and a way of measuring whether it is working. Auditors increasingly talk to staff on the floor to see whether the culture described in the plan is real.

• Set specific objectives, not general statements.
• Measure them: surveys, near-miss reporting, training completion, observation findings.
• Review results at management meetings and record the actions taken.

The food safety plan (HACCP)

Your HACCP-based food safety plan remains central. Auditors check that the team is competent, the hazard analysis is current, CCPs are validated, and monitoring records are complete and signed. Any change in raw material, recipe, equipment or process should trigger a documented review.

Product safety, authenticity and food defence

Expect questions on raw material risk assessment, supplier approval, food fraud vulnerability assessment and site security. A vulnerability assessment for food fraud and a threat assessment for food defence should be documented, owned and reviewed at least annually.

Site standards, environmental monitoring and hygiene

Factory layout, product flow, cleaning, pest management and environmental monitoring are verified on the floor. A risk-based environmental monitoring programme, with trend analysis and clear action when results are out of limit, is now a routine expectation.

Internal audits and root cause analysis

Internal audits must cover the whole standard over the year and be carried out by trained auditors. When non-conformities occur, auditors want to see genuine root cause analysis and preventive action, not a repeated correction.

A practical readiness checklist

• Run a full internal audit against Issue 9 clause by clause.
• Walk the site as an auditor would: from goods-in to dispatch.
• Check that every CCP record for the last three months is complete.
• Test traceability: pick a finished product and trace it back to raw materials, and forward to customers, within the required time.
• Make sure staff can explain their role in food safety in their own words.

QCS Global is a BRCGS approved training partner and runs Issue 9 courses for sites, auditors and lead auditors, plus related modules such as HACCP, HARPC, root cause analysis, environmental monitoring and vulnerability assessment.

Talk to QCS Global. Our team in Karachi runs public courses, in-house training and consultancy for food businesses across Pakistan. Email info@qcsglobal.org or call +92 337 2112775 (Monday to Saturday, 9 am to 5 pm), or browse our courses.