Do You Have The Necessary Tools To Complete Your SQF Internal Audit? (Part One Of Three)

By Lance Schultz, Quality Programs Facilitator, JD Smith & Sons Ltd.

A food safety management system (FSMS) is a great tool for any company that wants to evaluate its food safety performance and provide assurance to customers about the safety of the food company’s food. SQF (Safe Quality Food) is an FSMS benchmarked to the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) food safety requirements. SQF integrates food safety and quality components into the standard and shares audit scores with customers directly on the SQFI website. This article aims to provide best practices regarding your SQF Level, the Scope of your product, and your Verification Schedule to successfully audit your SQF system.

To ensure that your company’s SQF system is functioning as it should, it must be analyzed for conformity to the standard with an internal audit. You may either be conducting your first internal audit in preparation for certification or analyzing your entire system to ensure compliance for re-certification. The internal audit is a company’s assessment of its own processes and procedures. It should be conducted by the SQF Practitioner — a full-time, trained individual with formal HACCP training — which is a requirement of the standard. The internal audit should include a review of all policy and procedural documents, all records used for assessment of defined food safety objectives, and an inspection of all processes on the plant floor.