Conducting BRC Internal Audits

Morning everyone, I have a potential client (Packhouse) that require me to do their BRC Food Safety Internal Audit which will based on the BRC Food Safety Issue 8 Checklist. They also require me to sign off their audits as per the BRC requirement. Is there any issues if I conduct the Audit I am an FSSC 22000 Audit but have experience of working with BRC standard? How much doe you charge for this service?

BRC just says that the internal auditor must be competent, and without conflict of interest. We have the food safety director at another plant using a different standard performing our internal audits without issue.

Hi John,

Thanks for your insight, last question does the auditor require to have completed a BRC Auditor course or is FSSC 22000 and ISO 9001:2015 Lead Auditor course sufficient?

Clause 3.4.2. just states that auditors have to be appropriately trained and competent:

"Internal audits shall be carried out by appropriately trained, competent auditors. Auditors shall be independent (e.g. not audit their own work)."

I have worked for food manufacturers and carried out audits on the strength of internally-delivered training (so no accredited training), and I have carried out internal audits based on externally sourced training which resulted in a kind of certificate of attendance, but no substantial auditing qualification. In both cases, my audits have been accepted as valid at our site's BRCGS audit.

It can be quite a good thing if your internal auditing team leader has a more substantive qualification, but in my experience there are no defined measures for 'appropriately trained and competent' - so if you can demonstrate any training and the completed audits are conducted satisfactorily (i.e. do not suffer deficiencies caused by a lack of competency on the part of the auditor), then that is sufficient for compliance.