Certifications
British Retail Consortium (BRC)
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) is an umbrella association for a significant number of distributors in Great Britain. In response to the needs of the industry, the BRC developed the BRC Food Technical Standard in 1998. This standard is intended to be used for evaluating the food processing plants in order to assist the distributors and owners of food brands in their efforts to comply with the new European regulatory framework concerning the health safety of foods. As mentioned in the first part of this chapter, in keeping with Regulation (EC) 178/2002, distributors and food brands are obligated to respect the principle of due diligence. This means that they must be able to demonstrate that all precautions for preventing noncompliance with health safety have been taken in order not to be held liable under law. Despite its British origin, this PVS is now used in more than 100 countries throughout the world. The BRC Food Technical Standard is a so-called “B-to-B (business-to-business) PVS, in other words not accompanied by a label on the final product destined for the consumer. Compliance with this PVS must be verified by a third party accredited as an official certification body and respecting the BRC rules for auditing. Hence the BRC does Chapter 3 not audit businesses itself, but is the owner of the PVS and manager of the certification process. The BRC Food Technical Standard is therefore intended for processors of food products, enabling them to attest to their Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) and the quality management systems that they have implemented in order to ensure that the products that they sell fulfil the requirements of both their customers and the regulatory framework in effect. This PVS is thus applicable to any plant that processes or packages food products. The standard has 7 chapters :
Involvement of the company management and continuous improvement: in order for a food health safety management system to work, it is essential for the company management to support the implementation and encourage the continuous improvement thereof.
The plan for health safety: the basis for a health quality management system is the implementation of the HACCP process, as defined in the Codex Alimentarius.
The quality and health quality management system: this section lists criteria for quality and health quality management based on the ISO 9000 standard that must be fulfilled. The criteria relate to the product specifications, the choice of suppliers, traceability, and management of incidents and recalls.
The standards for the sites: this part of the standard defines the constraints for the physical packaging and/or processing environment in terms of layouts, maintenance of the building and the machine fleet, cleaning, disease control and waste management. There is also a section that deals specifically with checking for foreign matter.
Product control: these are control points relating to the phases of product design and development, management of allergens, and also to product-testing laboratories and test phases.
Process control: this section relates to the establishment and maintenance of process controls, weight/volume controls, and calibration of the equipment.
Human resources: lastly, this part defines the criteria for training staff about wearing protective clothing and practising personal hygiene.
The costs for certification will depend (as is often the case) on the size of the site and on which systems have already been implemented in the business. It may turn out, for example, that the business must invest in order to upgrade its site, or that it may have to resort to outside expertise for documenting its procedures in preparation for an audit. BRC obviously has no control over these costs, nor over the auditing fees charged by the certification bodies.
