BRCGS Certification

What Food Businesses Must Know About BRCGS Food Safety Certification

In the food industry now and forever, there will never be a possibility of just meeting the expectations of saleable quality of product, and assurance of food safety to its customers. BRCGS Food Safety Certification not only aids food-related manufacturers in developing and maintaining systems that protect and far exceed internationally accepted standards, but has additional benefits to efficiency in operation and ultimately of Consumer confidence.

What is BRCGS Food Safety Certification?

BRCGS (Brand Reputation Compliance Global Standards) is a global certification standard for food products that ensures the food you produce, package, and ship meets food safety and quality compliance. This indicates to your current and future customers that food safety is important to you, minimizes the risk of contamination, and helps develop your brand.

How Global Food Safety Standards Keep Your Products Safe

Food safety standards are created to minimize risks in food production and its associated supply chain. BRCGS has aligned with International Food Safety Standards – ISO 22000, FSSC 22000, and HACCP. This ensures we are working to international standards. The key areas are as follows:

Product Safety: Always ensuring you are free of contamination and cleanliness throughout the production process.
Quality Management: Consistency of the quality of the product and traceability.
Supplier/Packaging Standards: Ensure your raw materials, ingredients, and packaging are all safe and in compliance with our standards.

What Food Businesses Need to Know About the New BRCGS Standards

The latest update from BRCGS (Brand Reputation through Compliance Global Standards) has proposed numerous new enhancements that are meant to further enhance food safety, quality, and security – on a global basis.

Risk Management Improvements

The new standard states businesses will be expected to conduct risk assessments and tasks that go beyond the standard hazard identification. Businesses are now expected to introduce risk monitoring in real time. Conduct real-time risk assessments to address emerging risk, and innovate facility controls in real time and without delay in response to allergens, foreign bodies, and product/process deviations.

Stronger Supplier Approval & Monitoring

As it pertains to food safety auditors, efficacy evaluations, and traceability requirements. If applicable, these will require industry specialists to conduct more depth of assessments with a higher frequency of auditing. The new supply qualification/approval processes will necessitate that producers formally ensure every supplier complies with industry-accepted minimums for health, values related to the global standards, before supply qualification/approval

Updated Packaging Materials and Labelling

With a new focus on packaging safety and environmentally friendly packaging materials. BRCGS version 9 now requires a more in-depth examination of food contact packaging materials for aspects surrounding safety, risk of contamination, recyclability, and compliance with international label requirements. These include compliance with safety, sourcing, nutritional fact table, and allergens.

The Benefits of BRCGS Certification for Food Manufacturers

Becoming BRCGS certified has numerous advantages:

Global customers: BRCGS certification is readily accepted and recognized by retailers across the globe.
Confidence: It assures safety and quality.
Risk mitigation: It helps reduce the risk of contamination, product recalls, and lawsuits.
Efficiency: It helps improve your processes and documentation.
Brand assurance: It provides greater assurance to your customers and suppliers.

BRCGs Food Safety Certification Explained: Every Step You Need to Know

Obtaining certification is a straight-forward process if you put in some time, effort, and preparation.

Gap Analysis: Assess how your current procedures measure up against the BRCGS requirements.
System Implementation & Training: Implement your own food safety management system and train your employees.
Internal Audit: Carry out an internal audit to prepare for the audit and show them your records.
BRCGS Audit: The auditor will assess your compliance with what you have put in place in terms of corrective actions to certify you.
Continuous Improvement: Make sure you maintain your standards each year in preparation for the audit.

BRCGS Packaging Requirements Every Food Business Should Know

The following are the key expectations of BRCGS related to any packaging materials used for any food or consumer product:

Packaging needs to protect against cross-contamination and, at the very least, act to protect the food or consumer product, throughout the process – manufacture, storage, and distribution.
Anything related to the packaging will have a complete hazard analysis and risk assessment undertaken for biological, chemical, and physical risks.
Packaging will assist in any sustainability initiatives, wherever possible, e.g., recyclable or ethically sourced. We must have evidence as to what we are doing to be sustainable.
Packaging must be totally traceable from raw material to finished product at the point of delivery, and any third-party documentation must be validated for the finished product, where applicable.
We must have controls in place for food safety management processes linked to the product and process, e.g., documented specifications, in-line quality checks on the food product, allergen, or regulatory labelling.
Records should be available, after the fact, that demonstrate employee competency. Training can be used as a management control for hygiene, quality, and compliance-related risks within the food processing environment.

Why Choose Legal4sure for BRCGS Certification?

Legal4sure is there for you during the entire BRCGS certification process, doing a gap analysis, preparing your documentation, providing staff training, and audit support. Our experiences allow us to assist small and medium-sized food companies to not only get BRCGS certification, but also get it done more quickly than they could do it themselves.