How to dispute your food audit corrective action requests

Sometimes during the audit you may not agree with the CARs (corrective action requests) that an auditor has raised. Watch the video to find out how to dispute these CARs.

 

 

Welcome

Hi, I am Amanda Evans and welcome to Episode 21 of HACCP Mentor Review. This episode covers how to dispute an audit corrective action request, flow chart verification evidence, customer complaint trending and an often forgotten area in the food production site.

Food Safety Live

Just a quick reminder of Food Safety Live that is coming up on June 26, 2013. I will be presenting at 10.00am British Summer Time (BST).  My presentation is on how to think outside the box for HACCP success. If you have any questions relating to the presentation that you would like to ask me head over to the food safety live website. I will put a link in the episode transcript.

Complaint Trending

The purpose of complaint trending is to see just that – is there a negative or positive trend in the types of complaints that your business is receiving. When you look at complaints on a singular basis you might not instantly recognise that there may be a problem or an escalating issue. The best way to present this information is via type of complaint, time frame and quantity.

Action of the week 

This weeks action item is to go and check that all of your fire extinguishers are clean and that there are no pests behind them. This area is often overlooked as part of the cleaning and pest control programs.

Disputing audit corrective action requests

Sometimes during the audit you may not agree with the CARs (corrective action requests) that an auditor has raised. If you would like to dispute any non-conformances that you received in an audit, you need to liaise directly with the certification body that undertook the audit.

However, before doing so, I would suggest you review the particular part of the standard for which the non-conformance was raised to ensure that your appeal is justified (based on the evidence that the auditor reviewed during the audit and what the standard actually states).

Keep in mind that if the standard states ‘shall’, ‘will’ or ‘must’ – it is mandatory and a CAR can then be raised. If the standard states “should” this is optional, and the auditor should not be raising a CAR.

Flow Charts

One of the requirements of HACCP is to verify your flow process chart. In an audit, you will be required to provide evidence to support that you and the HACCP team have undertaken this process. This simplest way to show verification is to have each of the HACCP team members sign and date a copy of the flow process chart that was reviewed.

Wrap Up

Well that wraps another episode of HACCP Mentor Review. If you have listened to the episode via podcast I would love if you could head over to iTunes and leave a review. As always, keep sending me your questions and I try and answer them or at the very least point you in the right direction. Until next time, have a great week from HACCP Mentor.com.