Baking&Snack - November 2011 - 66

FOOD SAFETY Q&A

evaluate as well as the rigor that they use to make the evaluation. While there are differences in how the actual audits are structured, the essence of the questions being asked by auditors for each standard is much the same. This shouldn’t be a surprise since one of the intents of GFSI was to develop a widely accepted set of evaluation criteria that would help eliminate the ever-increasing confusion regarding the various audit options that have been made available by a host of audit companies. My best advice would be that any company seeking a GFSI certification should do a little research to understand the basics of how each standard operates and then choose the one that seems to best meet its situation. What do companies have to do to be certified in these schemes? What are some basic steps involved? The first thing a company has to do is make an executive level decision to provide the resources — people, time and finances — necessary to achieve the certification. After that, it must identify and empower a company associate to be the main point person. I like to think of this person as the Coordinating Champion, whose function is to keep the certification process moving and keep the communication lines open between top management and the production facility. This Coordinating Champion needs to become the company’s resident expert in all aspects of achieving and then maintaining its GFSI-recognized certification. Next, a company should review the various GFSI standards and select one that seems the best fit for its situation and need. Then it selects a third-party audit company, the certification body, that is certified to conduct the GFSI standard. A couple of good questions a company would probably want to ask when trying to identify a potential certification body include an estimated cost of the audits and the approximate lead

time, or the availability of auditors certified to do the audit for the company’s specific food industry. Individual auditors are only certified for industries for which they have great expertise and experience, so often they must be booked well in advance of your actual audit date. The company should then address all audit criteria detailed in the GFSI standard it has selected and seek professional help to assist in the preparation process. A variety of GFSI-standard-specific training seminars are offered around the country. In addition, consultants can be utilized by companies that desire more individualized assistance. Many companies elect to have a pre-audit conducted by their certification body that doesn’t count for certification but is normally extremely beneficial in helping the companies better understand the gaps in their audit preparation processes. The preaudit can also give them a feel for the high level of rigor that they must demonstrate to show their execution against the standard. For most companies, this pre-audit is a very eyeopening experience because it often digs much deeper than the company may have experienced during previous audits. The next step is to set up the audit dates with the certification body. The audit will typically involve multiple consecutive days as determined by the size and complexity of the operation. Most audits run at least two and a half days. After the audit, a company should follow up with corrections for all nonconformities observed during the audit and continue to work on maintaining and improving existing programs as part of the company’s ongoing continuing improvement program. Can you give some examples of common mistakes bakeries and snack plants make in trying to get certified? Trying to do just enough to get by. While this approach may have

proved adequate with other less rigorous audits, it is a recipe for failure when seeking a GFSI-type audit. A corollary to the above point is not having the full, visible and tangible support of top management. Another mistake is setting an audit date based on pressure from a customer rather than on what is realistically possible for the company to achieve. Also hazardous is not designating a point person who will act as the Coordinating Champion to provide oversight not only to the initial preparation process but the ongoing continuing improvement, which is critical and expected for subsequent audits. Insufficient documentation, poorly created forms and procedures as well as incomplete record completion are other common pitfalls. What happens if a bakery or snack manufacturer fails to be certified by the GFSI-recognized program of its choosing? Most obvious is the fact that a company can no longer state that it is GFSI-certified, which will, if not corrected, preclude it from doing business with those customers that required it in the first place. The results of the GFSI audit are not part of the public domain, and therefore, a company must grant permission for the audit results to be released to any of its customers. However, it goes without saying that a company should inform its customers that require a GFSI audit if and when its certification status changes. The various standards detail the steps for a re-audit, but simply stated, a company wouldn’t want to go through the expense of a re-audit until it was confident that all of its systems were operating properly. ◾
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Baking&Snack - November 2011

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