Food Sector Categories Want Us To Change Auditors
We had our first SQF off-site document audit on April 7th, 2017. I just got a call from the certification body saying they put us in the wrong Food Sector Category and now they want to switch our auditor for the site audit and re-review our documents. Has anyone else had this problem before? They put is in Cagegory 14 and they are saying we should be in Category 18 and our auditor isn't qualified to audit that category.
This is an internal error by the CB in that they allowed a registered SQF auditor that is not qualified for your FSC to conduct the audit. Since it is their error, they pay for it and you should tell them you want a re-do with a qualified auditor.
Next up, why is it that the CB selected your FSC and not you? Just wondering and the next question is - did the Auditor not show his ID card when he came in to your facility to do the audit, it is a requirement and you would have been on the card that your category was not on it.
We chose our Certification Body based on our SQF Consultant's advice. The Certification Body chose our sector category 14 and we had our document audit off-site. After review by the Certification Body's technical manager, he found that we were in the wrong category and they are saying our auditor wasn't qualified to conduct an audit in Category 18. Now we just got an email that we have to re-do our document audit and our side audit is in 2 weeks. The document audit shouldn't be hard since we passed the first time it's just a pain that I have to take another day of my time when we are a small company and I have a lot to do everyday. Another worry is that our site audit is so close and we may get a different auditor who finds things we need to correct before the site audit.
You are supposed to assess your process and decide which FSC you are. The auditor would audit you against that assessment. You in turn are supposed to audit the auditor's credentials to ensure they are appropriate for your FSC.
This is our first SQF Audit for some reason our Certification Body chose our category sector and we had an off-site audit so we didn't see our auditor credentials.
That is odd, at least to me. You can still review the off-site auditor's credentials. In our case, before the auditor arrives I request from the CB the CB's accreditation certificate and the assigned auditor's accreditation. On it should list the FSC's for which they are authorized to audit.
Thank You. At least now I understand to ask for the auditor credentials before the audit.
Considering the CB err'd you should request a longer separation of time between the re-do on the desk audit and the on-site cert audit, they can't deny this because it was their mess up.