Compliance checks are a great way of managing risk within your food business. Every food business should be undertaking some level of checking to ensure that policies, procedures, legislation or other rules are being complied with.
If your food business is required to have a documented food safety program in place to manage food safety risks, compliance checks will be required as part of implementation and management.
Prepare a Compliance Checks Tool
Part of undertaking compliance checks is the need for the preparation and use of some type of compliance tool. The most common compliance or audit tool used is a “checklist”. A checklist is a list of issues that require reviewing as part of the compliance process.
The benefits of using a checklist include:
- Useful for inspecting or auditing your business against a specific standard, regulation or company procedure.
- Act as a memory aid to ensure that all areas and requirements are reviewed.
- Allows physical evidence, observations and notes to be recorded.
- Recorded notes can then be used in preparing more formal reports as required.
- Helps to benchmark different inspectors or auditors within your business ie always checking the same issues or requirements.
- Can provide a structured approach and logical flow to the inspection or audit process.
Tick and flick
It is very important to ensure that checklists are not used merely as a “tick and flick” exercise – the importance lies in recording actual evidence observed. Your evidence must be thorough enough to support any action that is required to be taken after the compliance check has been completed.
Certification Standards
All of the GFSI certification standards require compliance checks to be undertaken. These checks may be in the form of internal audits (for both adequacy and compliance), good manufacturing practices (GMP) audits or incoming goods receival assessment, to name a few. Regardless, the implementation of a program of compliance checking makes for good business and good risk management.
