I note with interest the lead story of Monday, March 1, 2010 that “Food safety audits never enough”. There is no question that a simple food safety audit is not the ‘be all and end all’ in assuring food safety, whether at the retail, processing, manufacturing, or farm level.
However, to broad stroke the worthlessness of food safety audits is, in my opinion, a grave error. There is no question that over the past several years some high profile recalls and outbreaks, including outbreaks associated with deaths, have occurred in facilities that have had third-party audits.
The questions should be, “Who is the auditor?”, “What are the auditor’s credentials?” and “What is the motivation of the auditing firm that is conducting the audit?” Specifically, having auditors that do not have minimum credentialing of a Registered Sanitarian or Registered Environmental Health Specialist (R.S./ R.E.H.S.) is clearly the beginning of a recipe for failure.
Some of the national auditing firms that have teams of auditors who post on their websites that the minimum requirements are a high school diploma or equivalent and five to ten years of experience in a food plant clearly do not meet any credentialing standards that I would want to have as an auditor. Individuals who possess the correct credentials of the R.S./R.E.H.S. require a Bachelors Degree with 30 credits in the sciences, training, experience, and passing a state or national examination.