In my experience, GFSI certification is only achieved/maintained because many customers require it.
I feel like there is a shift from "food safety" toward "audit-readiness", which just encourages the bad actors to clean up just enough to "pass the audit." I'm not sure if the unannounced audit scheme helps alleviate that a bit. But I believe that customers who refuse to do business with sites that don't maintain a certain audit score contribute to that attitude. I also believe it's against a CB's best interest to 100% truthfully dig in during an audit, because they don't want to lose the certified site as a customer, so how much trust should we put in GFSI certifications?
From my perspective on the supplier approval end as well, GFSI certificates have become a substitute for on-site supplier audits. I don't think it's a good trend. When we review a supplier's GFSI audit report, we are receiving secondhand observations from whom we assume is a qualified auditor. Instead of going on-site to get firsthand observations ourselves, we are relying on the hope that the auditor is identifying problems of concern.
For example: I've had an auditor make a big stink about a candy wrapper found deep under a lunchroom vending machine after totally ignoring the huge discrepancies in our traceability exercise. If I were my customer, I wouldn't give a heck about a candy wrapper in a lunchroom--I'd be worried about the poor traceability.
I guess my point is that GFSI has made us a bit complacent, which is not something we should be in the food industry.
The reason that companies get certificated to a GFSI scheme is exactly because many customers require it.
If you do the things that the particular standard requires on a daily basis, you are by default "audit ready".
I'm sure it would better to actually audit a suppliers manufacturing facility, but that supposes you are qualified to audit manufacturers of various materials, I don't think your average food manufacturing facility has that knowledge base, nor the budget for travel to possibly multiple countries around the world.
GFSI standards are fine. It's the obvious stuff you should be doing.
Certain customer standards are certainly more proscritive, but they are not even going to talk to you unless you are certificated to a GFSI Standard.
I get the whole "subjective auditor" thing.
I get the whole "game" that is played with audits of this type. We always take the auditors out to dinner and we talk about the observations of the day and whatever other talk. It does not change the score of an audit, because the finding is what it was. But because auditors are not allowed to "consult", this is an off the record relaying of best practices observed that if implemented at your facility, might solve the problem.
This is good thing.
All that being said, It's better to have some standard when it comes to (in my case) food manufacturing than none.
If you are a food manufacturer and are just doing what the "standard" requires, then you probably should not be manufacturing food.
Marshall
Edited by mgourley, 03 August 2024 - 02:57 AM.
