What is your audit attitude?

Your audit attitude can really impact the outcome of a audit. Attitude is everything and can affect your ability to be organised, answer questions appropriately and ensure the smooth running of the audit.

 

00:00 – What’s in this episode

00:24 – Customer Contracts

00:59 – What is your audit attitude?

02:07 – Allergens in Vending Machines

02:30 – Finding food hazard information

03:07 – Food Product Recalls

03:57 – Very un-Australian food safety fail

04:18 – Connect and share

 

 Transcript

Welcome to HACCP Mentor Review number 9  – I am Amanda Evans and in this episode we discuss:

• Documenting customer contracts
• What is your audit attitude
• Where to find hazard information on raw materials
• Allergens in vending machines

along with food product recalls and a very un-Australian food safety fail. 

Customer Contracts

The provision of customer contracts is a requirement for the majority of the GFSI standards.  I know a lot of businesses do not have ‘formal documented’ contracts but there are some really simple ways to evidence this during your third party certification or surveillance audit.  Include on any invoices, delivery notes or paperwork that goes to your customer, your trading terms and conditions. You can then link their acceptance of your goods or contract of supply to that paperwork.

What is your audit attitude?  

Your audit attitude can really impact the outcome of a audit.  Attitude is everything and can affect your ability to be organised, answer questions appropriately and ensure the smooth running of the audit. From my perspective as an auditor, I generally see a much better outcome when auditees are open to business improvement, organised, focused, limit excuses and are not argumentative.

I am not saying that you shouldn’t question certain things in the audit if they are valid, but more so around the audit criteria.  The auditors generally don’t write the standards that you get audited against – they are just there to assess your compliance against those rules.  In the end, your business has the ultimate choice. You choose to do business with a particular customer (who requires a level of compliance), you choose to be in the food industry and you choose to do something that maybe your competitors are not doing.

You also choose your attitude – if needed, work on making a change today for the better.

Action of the week

This week’s QA action item is to go and check that the staff vending machine does not contain unidentified allergens.  A lot of the time, vending machines are serviced by people outside of your business so it a really simple check. You can then cross reference what is in the machine against your list of allergens allowed on site.

Hazard information for raw materials

The easiest place to find information on hazards relating to different types of raw materials is to firstly ask a supplier of that raw material.  If the supplier has a completed HACCP plan and developed finished product specifications, you should hopefully be able to find information in those documents.

The CODEX Alimentarius Website is another good source when you use their search engine to search for your required ingredient.  The site normally states different hazards associated with your selected ingredient.  I will put a link to Codex in the show notes.

Food Recalls

Undeclared sulphites featured heavily in  undeclared allergen food recalls in the past week. Products included Honey Roast Nuts & Fruit Mix, White Melon Seeds, Ginger Slices and Preserved Fruits.

There has also been a food recall after it was discovered that peanut butter Easter eggs had been wrongly packed into Walnut Easter eggs packaging.

38,000 pounds of pork sausage has also been recorded due to the small pieces of plastic which is likely to have come from gloves.  Based on this – it is a good idea to check how you control hand gloves in your food business.

Food Safety Fail

A totally ‘un-Australian’ food safety fail has been reported after the NSW Food Authority welcomed the $66,000 fine handed out to an abattoir.  The business was prosecuted for lamb substitution as consumers rightly expect meat labels to be correct and not a substituted product.   

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That wraps it up for this edition. Feel free to share this video and don’t forget to subscribe to our mailing list to receive more HACCP Mentor videos like this. If you have any questions or comments just drop a line below this video.

Thanks for watching, I am Amanda Evans from HACCPmentor.com.