This post will explore the importance of verifying your suppliers’ food safety practices, including conducting audits and inspections, requiring certifications, and establishing clear communication channels. By doing so, you can be sure that your customers are getting safe food products.

Why checking your supplier’s food safety practices is important? 

As a food business, you want to ensure that the food ingredients you are sourcing are safe and compliant with all required regulations. Here are three reasons why verifying your supplier’s food safety practices is important:

1. Compliance with regulatory requirements can add costs to your production process and lower product margins. By verifying the food safety of your suppliers, you can avoid this cost altogether
2. Food safety issues can hurt customer satisfaction and lead to lost sales. It can also create an unnecessary headache in managing food safety issues. Ensuring that the food supplied by your suppliers meets standards will improve customer loyalty as well as product quality and consistency
3. Failing to verify the supplier’s food safety could lead to legal liability if an unsafe product makes its way into the market or if there is any contamination resulting from improper handling of food ingredients

How to verify your supplier’s food safety practices? 

Food safety is a top priority for consumers and companies alike. When choosing a supplier, ensuring the company you’re working with meets your food safety needs is important. There are several methods of verifying your supplier’s food safety practices:

• Using a supplier questionnaireto approve and review suppliers’ food safety programs and systems.
  • You may use a standard supplier questionnaire that you can download on our websiteor generate a customized copy according to your needs.
  • For SFPM’s client, we generate a customized copy to ensure it meets our client’s requirements for additional claims such as organic, kosher, gluten-free, allergen-free etc.
• Reviewing food inspection reports
  • With a federally regulated food facility, they may be inspected by CFIA or US FDA. Requesting a copy of the food inspection report helps you understand the authority’s observations and serve as a data source to evaluate your supplier’s food safety management system.
  • When it comes to observations, it doesn’t mean that they will repeat the mistakes. You still want to know so you can mitigate the potential risks.
  • For SFPM’s clients, we review the supplier documentation and highlight the risks to them so they understand possible risks associated with using the particular supplier.
• Obtain a third-party audit certificate and review the audit report
  • A third-party food safety audit certificate allows us to ensure that our suppliers comply. We will discuss the food safety certification you require in the next section
• Use a letter of guarantee to ensure your supplier is aware of their responsibilities to provide safe food according to the country of manufacturing and sales.
• You may also personally OR choose to hire an external auditor to conduct an audit or inspections for your high-risk supplier -we will discuss more in the next section.

What food safety certifications are required for suppliers? 

Food safety is critical for any company, whether a small business or an international conglomerate. Food safety certification can ensure that your suppliers are up to par and meet your food safety requirements.

There are many certifications available for food providers, but some of the most common include the following:

• GMP and HACCP certification
  • It is important to understand that the GMP certification and HACCP certifications are based on the HACCP principles. Some basics on GMP and HACCP
    • GMP or Good Manufacturing Practices and covers aspects like product testing procedures, sanitation measures, record keeping etc.
    • HACCP -Food manufacturers can use the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points program to mitigate or reduce hazards during the production or storage of food products.
  • However, the audit requirements can vary based on the certification body.
• ISO certification
  • ISO 22000: 2005 is used by organizations in the food industry to certify their compliance with global standards like HACCP and GMP
  • The benefit of ISO certification over GMP certification and HACCP certification is that the standards do not vary based on the certification body
• Globally recognized food safety scheme (GFSI).
  • Examples are SQF, FSSC 22000, BRC, Primus GFS, Global Gap, IFS, Asia Gap etc. You can visit the GFSI scheme website for the additional benchmarked scheme.
  • The best way for a supplier to prove compliance and commitment towards a food safety management system when working in the global setting is through the GFSI scheme.
  • Regardless of which GFSI scheme they choose, all GFSI schemes are benchmarked to meet GFSI requirements. So, you will find very minimal differences.

Once certified, your supplier will receive their food safety audit certificate and report. We recommend getting a copy of your supplier food safety audit certificate and report. Be sure to review them for compliance.

SFPM work with a supplier approval management system

Working with suppliers can be a daunting task, especially when you are working with many suppliers and ingredients. They take a lot of time and mental power to handle. Our SFPM experts can lift that burden off your shoulders by setting up your supplier approval program or set an automated system for your supplier approval request. You know we are talking about when you manage more than 30 ingredients and supplier combinations. It is a lot of work! We can help you get set up. Contact us

How to carry out an audit or inspection?

In the previous section, we spoke about conducting additional audits or inspections. The rise of third-party audit certification is meant to reduce the burden of supplier visits to the food manufacturer or storage and distribution facility. Adding additional inspection can overload your supplier. However, there are certain situations in which you will want to consider incurring additional costs for additional inspection activities.

Let’s understand the differences between food safety audits and inspections.

• A food safety audit is an evaluation conducted by a third party to determine if a supplier’s systems and practices comply with applicable food safety regulations.
• Food safety inspections are similar to audits but also include assessing the physical conditions of facilities and conducting the regulatory standards.

There are many ways you can satisfy this requirement:

• Using your facility’s internal auditor
• Using a trained and contracted food safety auditor and certification body
• Using a local food safety consultant (that is not associated with the facility)

Using Your Facility’s Internal Auditor

To do this, you will want to ensure a qualified internal auditor can travel to the site for an audit. You will want to ensure you have a checklist for a specific thing that you are looking for. Typically, you will sample important elements of your supplier’s food safety systems as you have a short time frame during the audit.

Using A Trained and Contracted Food Safety Auditor And/Or Certification Body

This method is a more structured and comprehensive audit or inspection. Instead of performing this yourself, you will provide your requirements to a certification body that you approved so they know what to expect when auditing or reviewing your supplier’s food safety systems.

This may be added as an audit addendum, such as what COSTCO addendum or as a stand-alone audit for other food distributors.

Variation: You may also train an external auditor to perform this audit instead of contracting this out to a certification body.

Using a Local Food Safety Consultant

There are many benefits to using a local food safety consultant that can travel to the facility at minimal cost and can help you review your supplier’s process and food safety management system. It is like running the inspection yourself but without travel.

Variation: You can also hire a food safety consultant that you trust and run the meeting through a virtual platform, provided that you are not concerned about the facility’s condition or your supplier can show the facility through Zoom

How can we assist?

At SFPM Consulting, we are capable and experienced in conducting on-site and remote audits to help verify your supplier’s food safety program. We can build a customized checklist and audit program for your supplier OR use your existing checklist to conduct the audit.

That being said, selecting which type of review to conduct depends on the specifics of your relationship with your suppliers and how important compliance with applicable standards is to you. However, ensuring that your suppliers are compliant always makes sense for any business involved with food production throughout the distribution channels.

How to establish clear communication channels with your suppliers 

We must maintain communication for suppliers as their standard or our standard may change over time. When a requirement or standard changes, it is important that we recognize whom to contact. Here are the four main ways you can do this are:

• Establishing clear communication channels
• Have a recall contact person
• Set up the expectation for food safety issues and changes
• Conducting a supplier performance review call/ feedback mechanism.

Clear communication and Recall Contact

Establishing clear communication channels is key because it lets you quickly identify food safety issues and make necessary changes. A good way to do this is by having an organized system where all relevant information about suppliers—from their addresses to their certifications—is readily accessible. This will allow you to keep track of who has contact with which products and any recalls or modifications made related to food safety risks.

Setting Expectations for Food Safety Issues and Changes

When working with suppliers, it is important to set expectations in the contract agreements for communicating specifications and food safety management systems before the changes occur. This is important so that you are not obtaining any ingredients that are not meeting your expectation.

Regularly reviewing your ingredient’s quality and obtaining feedback from your food production department also can identify changes in ingredients’ specifications and quality.

Supplier’s Performance Review

There is a good reason for reviewing our supplier’s performance and having a backup supplier. Regular supplier performance reviews (SPRs) help you, as the client, gain insights into the ingredient’s quality so that you can provide valuable feedback to the supplier. You can provide the supplier with the good, the bad and the improvement opportunities.

At the same time, you can evaluate the supplier’s food safety risk and plan for risk mitigation works such as supplier visits if necessary.

Conclusion 

Food safety is vitally important, not only for your facility but also for the suppliers who supply your food. By verifying your suppliers’ food safety practices and requiring certifications or other markers of compliance, you can ensure that your food is safe and correct.

We have discussed several strategies to ensure our food supplier’s compliance. Supplier Management can be challenging but it doesn’t have to stay that way.

We have the easy-to-implement solutions you are looking for. Contact us for a COMPLIMENTARY blueprint for your supplier’s compliance WITHOUT OBLIGATION.