Hello all,
Standard- BRC Product- herbs and spices, blends of herbs and spices, powdered beverage mixes Location- USA (but I'm from UK) Practical experience- not much
I am currently working on risk assessments for suppliers, raw materials and packaging- attached is the spreadsheet format I am using for the combined assessment for raw materials and suppliers (based on documents found at this forum). We have over 100 suppliers and several hundred products.This is essentially a start-up company as we recently bought a new spice business from a former customer and we are working on all aspects of food safety management, eventually working towards BRC. For now we are just focusing on HACCP/ PRPs/ GMPs and will move onto HARPC/ FSMA compliance later.
Some questions- do you think the info I am obtaining is sufficient for RM/ suppliers? If a supplier has GFSI accreditation, can I automatically consider them low risk? Should that judgement be dependent on audit grade where they are given to me? If so, ideas on what the cut off point for low risk would be between the different standards? (so far I have some BRC, some SQF) Any thoughts on my categories for the split of raw materials? Any good links for information on where I can find information on specific risks (e.g. pathogens associated with a group or fraud/ substitution) for these groups (I have the American Spice Trade Assn documents for this info for spices)?
For packaging suppliers, I found a reference on this forum to some other questions that could be asked that I wasn't familiar with- for migration certificates, is this something that I can expect my packaging suppliers to have (i.e. is it a legal requirement in the US)? Reference was made to PIGS documentation- what is this? It's not easy to search for this acronym on google! Any other good information to ask for for the packaging risk assessment?
Sorry for all of the questions, I hope my spreadsheet template gives a little back, and thanks for all the great advice you contributors give!
Ben