Notification to CB about power shortage and other incidents IFS Food 8
Hello everyone,
I would like to get your insight on the notification of the certification body in view of IFS Food - we had a shortage of power yesterday, which lead to internal rejection of some of our half-finished products.
There was no need for recall of any of the products (obviously).
I believe that we, therefore, do not need to notify the certification body, however it would be great to hear from someone who has more experience with this subject (1).
* What would be other cases of emergencies/incidents that you do consider cumpolsory to notify? E.g. fire, flooding or other permanent damage of equipment (yes), recall (yes), withdrawal (yes), data safety breach (?), loss of data due to equipment failure (?), severe equipment failure (e.g. one of the 3 production lines are unfit for use due to certain failure) (?), desease of empoyees (easily transmitable) (?), what else?
Also, (2) I do not believe we need to inform the client in such case, except if the raw materials/packaging materials are delivered by the client, please correct me if I am wrong.
(3) What would you consider a cumpolsory notification to the CB about the changes in the organisation? Our company makes part of a group of companies but only one of them has the production site. Some of our employees are hired by one company, others by another, but all make part of the group (total number employees around 30 - so not a big size company and the responsibilities intertwine for all the companies of the group).
--> Would you consider essential to notify the CB about splitting the Innovation and Product Development department into 2 seperate ones (with Innovation making part of one company due to patents and Product Development of another - the one that has the production site)?
It would be great to have your feedback on the 3 points asap!
Thank you!
When in doubt, ask the CB. That's what we've done over the years...
I'm only well versed in SQF so I can't speculate on all GFSI schemes, but based on what I know:
1. Internal problems like this don't require a notification to your CB. You're only required to notify if you have a public level event such as Class I/II recall or a warning letter from your regulation authority. To me it sounds like your program was followed and worked as intended.
2. I wouldn't tell any of my customers about any internal issue unless it they're on-site for an audit and find it in a record review.
3. This one is slightly more complicated. A cert only applies to the site that was inspected. If you're changing where production happens, that site needs a new and fresh audit. A major change otherwise in the operation could affect the scope you've defined to your CB, so it might be best to notify them. I would not bother writing in to my CB if we updated how we hire production staff or started employing more of them, just tell them when you apply for next year's audit.
You would not notify for something like this.
It all boils down to a significant event, should that occur you would notify - specifically, if there is going to be a good potential for blow back then it would be a notification requirement.
One of the biggest egg producers in the states had a massive food safety/sanitation issue - they failed to notify their cb/sqf, when news media found out about the problem they first went to SQFI, who knew nothing of the issue - you never leave your cb or in this case IFS in the position where they are in the dark - I have seen in my years as a consultant companies stripped of their certifications for this oversight.