BRC Global Standards has published the eighth issue of its internationally-recognized BRC Global Standard for Food Safety. The standard provides a framework to manage product safety, integrity, legality, and quality for the food manufacturing, processing, and packing industry.

The Standard has been updated to reflect the latest thinking in food safety and provides a framework for food manufactures to assist them to produce safe food.

The development of issue 8 followed a wide consultation to understand stakeholders’ requirements and review emerging issues in the food industry.

Key updates in the revised standard include:

• Encouraging the development of a food safety culture
• Expanding the requirements for environmental monitoring to reflect the increasing importance of this technique
• Encouraging sites to further develop systems for security and food defence
• Adding clarity to the requirements for high risk, high care, and ambient high care production risk zones
• Establishing a new approach to the audit process and audit reporting with greater focus on factory operations and management commitment
• Providing greater clarity for pet food manufacturers
• Ensuring global applicability and benchmarking to the Global Food Safety Initiative

The requirements of Issue 8 represent an evolution from previous issues with a continued emphasis on management commitment, the inclusion of a food safety programme based on hazard analysis and critical control points (HACCP), and a supporting quality management system.

Certification to the BRC Global Standard Food Safety Issue 8 allows suppliers worldwide to show customers that they are upholding the highest standards of safety, quality, and legal compliance. As such, the standard is available in a variety of languages to facilitate implementation by food businesses around the world.

Assessments against the new version of the standard will commence February 1, 2019.