Audits and Auditing: Are You Preparing for Improvement?

By Yuksel Eyyuboglu

Part of the magic of a food safety audit is that it reveals powerful information about dealing with a worst-case-scenario situation while the stakes are still quite low: in one situation, a review of an internal emergency plan presented a scenario based on a power failure. It didn’t take long for the facility team to realize that there was not even one flashlight in a building where there were no windows. This was easy to fix.

The goal of auditing is to control risks and ensure conformance to important standards and/or regulations.  Third-party auditors represent a Certification Body (CB) and all parties are bound by a series of agreements, contracts, and standards (e.g. ISO 17065 & ISO 17021).  Accreditation Bodies (ABs) monitor and audit the Certification Body.  In this sense, the sites and CBs are like Olympic competitors: they must follow the standards all the time, every time and their performance is judged on one day only. If the site or the CB can succeed while keeping all of its certificates or accreditations intact, and keeping all (or the majority) of its customers happy, it deserves all the medals available in the category.