As the Vice President of Food Safety and Quality Assurance at PacMoore, I’m always looking for new ways to demonstrate leadership in the food industry that will not only create positive change in our facilities but also lead to improved standards of execution in the food industry overall. We aim to provide the best possible quality and food safety performance in dry blending, spray drying, extrusion, and each of our other capabilities. That’s why PacMoore has stepped forward to become the first food facility in the industry to undergo an AuditOne Audit.
This program has been utilized by non-food companies including Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Unilever, Estee Lauder, L’oréal, and others for about two years and is now being launched in the food industry. We’re eager to benefit our industry through our transparency and collaboration with brand owners; so we’ve allowed them into our facility for the very first food industry AuditOne audit. I’ve been on the front end of developing the AuditOne food processes, and am proud of the result. On the implementation side, auditors are trained to be highly consistent, competent and apply rigorous standards for trustworthy evaluations. The outcome of PacMoore’s AuditOne audit combined with those from our BRC Unannounced audit are demonstrating that PacMoore’s food processing plants are of the highest possible caliber.
What is AuditOne?
If you’ve been following our blog for some time, you may remember our guest blog post with insights from Lisa Shambro when she visited PacMoore to present information about F4SS and provide industry wisdom. Lisa recently stepped down as Executive Director of F4SS to initiate and lead AuditOne Global.
AuditOne aims to simplify, standardize, and streamline quality audits. Every customer of a food facility needs to ensure their products are being treated with the highest possible food safety and quality practices. Historically, in order to ensure this standard of quality, each customer sends a representative to audit the food facility. Eventually, with each new customer, companies like PacMoore have become subjected to multiple audits each month and spend a great deal of time and energy on a repetitive process. AuditOne endeavors to ultimately become universally adopted in lieu of individualized audits. This will dramatically reduce the time and cost that quality teams from both customers and food facilities need to devote to audits.
Why do we need AuditOne?
This goal of both auditors and auditees saving their time and resources was part of why the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) was founded in 2000. GFSI helped to eliminate extra third party audits but it never really eliminated redundant second party audits. Third party audits are conducted based on an independent standard, with no direct business relationship. By contrast, a second party audit is a brand owner (or customer) auditing their own supplier. There’s a direct relationship between the two and a specific standard is being applied during the audit. This practice has become extremely inefficient and will only grow more so under new FSMA regulations, due to increased accountability on the supplier side. At PacMoore we often have several audits per week, which can make it difficult for us and other suppliers like us to grow and achieve new objectives. After some research, the founders of AuditOne and myself discovered why brand owners chose to audit their suppliers instead of relying on independent standards like the BRC, SQF, and FSSC 2200. They felt that the standards weren’t being applied clearly and consistently enough by the auditors. By putting together a key group of auditors who are calibrated through certification bodies and having them evaluate suppliers in the same way that the brand owners would have, these brand owners now know they’re protected and can trust the AuditOne process.
The list of food industry participants is rapidly growing and currently includes ingredient manufacturers, contract manufacturers, certification bodies and standard owners. Companies such as Nestlé, Hershey’s, Kellogg, General Mills, Kerry Ingredients, Hearthside Food Solutions, ConAgra Brands, Power Packaging, Schreiber Foods, Peacock Foods, Maple Leaf Foods, Unilever and many more are involved. Highly trusted certification bodies including AIB, NSF, SGS, DNV, and Merieux are on board as well.
What does an AuditOne Audit require?
Much like many other audits, AuditOne will be an annual audit including a site tour, records review, and trace exercise. To go beyond the requirements of BRC, SQF, or FSSC 22000, AuditOne can include an additional voluntary module to be integrated into the normal audit process. This can add 2 to 4 hours to the audit, which is still much more efficient than the traditional method requiring each customer to schedule an audit with each supplier.
How can other companies participate?
Companies who wish to participate are welcome to join in! Visit auditoneglobal.com to learn more and register.
