Inside BRCGS - English

Welcome to Food Safety Talk, the podcast for professionals in the food supply chain. So hello and welcome to today’s episode of our Food Safety Talk. I’m Iris Mars and my guest today is Angela O’Donovan from the UK. Hello Angela. Hello Iris. How are you? Yeah, I’m fine. Thank you for being here with me. And it’s great to have you here as you are head of the BRCGS programs and you will give us an insight on how the BRCGS standards are continually developed. But before we start, let’s hear a short info snippet on what the BRCGS organization does and why it is so important for food safety and quality. How about a little extra? Our Food Wiki. Food Reputation Compliance Global Standards or BRCGS is an organization that sets internationally recognized safety and quality standards for food, packaging, storage, distribution and consumer products. Originally developed by the British Retail Consortium or BRC, it rebranded to BRCGS to reflect its global influence when sold to a private company, LGC. Its food safety standard is widely used by 24,000 manufacturers, retailers and regulators to ensure food safety across the supply chain. Companies seeking certification undergo rigorous audits by accredited bodies to verify compliance. BRCGS also provides training and resources to help businesses maintain high safety and quality standards. Used by the Global Food Safety Initiative or GFSI, its standards ensure supply chain integrity and reduce risks of contamination and recalls. Compliance aligns with international regulations such as HACCP and ESO 22,000, helping businesses meet legal and industry requirements. BRCGS certification enhances consumer confidence and protects brand reputation. Many retailers require suppliers to be BRCGS certified, making it essential for market access. Ultimately, BRCGS strengthens global food safety and quality assurance, benefiting businesses and consumers alike. "I told me that you are head of programs, not of standards, and this indicates that there is a whole communication and program design to the development of standards. So developing, let’s say, the BRCGS food safety standard is a very complex process. So how does BRCGS identify trends and emerging issues in food safety and quality that start the revision of a standard?" So Iris, before we even start, I just want to say thank you to you, Iris, and also to TV Nord for this invitation. Oh, you’re welcome. Because I always love to talk to people about what we do at BRCGS. So I’m delighted to be here today. And as you said, yes, I’m head of programs responsible for 10 of the BRCGS global standards. And that means not only the food standards, which we’re best known for, but also the non-food standards. And really at BRCGS, I guess our mission, first of all, is about using science to make the world a safer place. And we very much focus on just creating the most robust food safety management system that anyone in the world can adopt. And then by using these frameworks, and actually just by following all the clauses and the rules that we’ve laid out, they can be confident that the food they produce is safe, it’s legal, it’s of the quality intended, and it is authentic. And what we mean by that is they’ve actually considered any risks of fraud. And then actually we use the same principles for the packaging standards and the non-food standards and actually also the same approach for the ethical and responsible sourcing standards. So when we go about developing the process and looking for trends and emerging issues, we actually apply the same process to all of them. Now, there might be a slight difference approach because when we look at there’s lots of different, I guess, sources of information. And we always originally start by looking at our technical advisory committees. So we have a technical advisory committee for most of the standards and certainly everyone that is GFSI benchmarked and recognized. But within the technical advisory committee, that is made up of people from and experts from all across the world representing the different sectors. So whether that’s just the retailers who specify the product, whether it’s the accreditation body, the certification body, the auditors, trade associations, we look to all of those people to help us, I guess, to look where the trends are and direct us on where the standards need to be developed. So we also look, we’re always attending webinars and attending conferences and I’ll also hosting conferences and webinars. And with that, we get a lot of feedback from where people believe the standard might have areas to improve. So we’re always just horizon scanning and seeing what’s changing within the world. And if legislation is changing or there are just new ways of working, then we need to consider that to make sure that they’re all included when we develop a new standard. So that is at the beginning. But then how, for example, how is the process of updating a standard? So could you walk us through this or what are the key steps that are involved? Yeah, sure, sure. But first of all, actually, the standards, they’re always been updated. So there is that continual improvement. So as soon as we launch a new standard, we’re straight away starting to think about the next standard. So we’re always capturing feedback and how we improve it. And between the updates, so between, say, issue 8 and issue 9 of food safety, we are capturing feedback already from customers and from all of our stakeholders as to what we can do to improve the next one. We’re always capturing that. But the whole process is, and sorry, any of those updates are done, if we ever do an updated STUN via a position statement, and that’s a normative document, which means that position statements can be audited against. So they’re part of the standard. So they’re very important. And those position statements are always on our website for everybody to see and are free to download as well as the standard itself. But so BRCGS, it’s not like we just sit there one day and decide, right, we’re going to update a standard. It is a very, very considered decision and process. So I mean, first of all, the entire process from, say, starting to think about developing a new standard and actually launching it is typically 18 months, sometimes longer. So it’s a very long process. But sometimes we will update it if it’s, you know, it depends. If it’s a GFSI benchmark standard, GFSI have rules around how often it must be reviewed. So they insist that it’s reviewed every three years. However, we must just point out that we can review it. A review doesn’t necessarily mean a rewrite. Okay. So we can review it. We can make changes, but we don’t necessarily launch a new one. What we do is we take that opportunity to reassess, have a look at it and think, right, what’s working well, what’s lacking, what needs to change, what improvements can we make, what has moved, what has changed in the industry for us now to consider. So we do obviously look at GFSI. This year now, obviously GFSI have launched a new benchmark, which means we now need to look at all of those four standards and see that they need to be updated so that they will meet the requirements of the benchmark. So that’s another reason why we would update it. And then if there’s, you know, the standards are also accredited. So the process itself starts, could be triggered by an external factor. It might be that we sit with our technical advisory committee and we actually go, you know what, it’s time to update. And then we start this long process that takes about 18 months. We start with ceasing or closing down the technical advisory committee because they help us during the life of the standard. We don’t need them when we’re rewriting. What we do is we create what we call a technical working group. And they, it’s the technical working group that determine the changes to the standard. It’s not BRCGS in isolation. And so the technical working group is in itself creating that technical working group is a very considered process as well, because we have to find the right stakeholders that represent every single sector globally to make sure that we capture feedback from as many different stakeholders as possible. So we will try and represent people from every region in the world. Remember our standards are used in over 130 countries. So we, so we need to get every geography represented. So what we do is we go out and we advertise on our website on on LinkedIn or social media and we look for technical working group members. And we will get say, for example, in our most recent rewrite of packaging materials issue seven, we have maybe over 200 people apply. 200, yeah. Yeah. And we have about room for maybe about 35 because beyond 35 people, it starts getting a bit difficult to capture all the, yeah. And trying to get everybody in the same room at the same time. So once we have the technical working group, we scope out, we scope out all of the meetings required. We go, we literally go through clause by clause. We look at also what’s happening in the market, do better market research, feed that into the working group. And then we literally work through every clause, as well as the protocol, as well as the actual audit report and any supporting guidelines or additional modules. And we discuss and debate almost every word. Like we really discuss every word. Is it a should or is it a shall? Is it a recommendation? You know, is it a guideline? You know, is there a procedure required? Is there not? So we’re very, very prescriptive on what the requirements are. And we, unlike at one technical working group meeting will generally be about six to seven hours long. Typically we will do seven or eight of those throughout the year before we then come up with a draft and then it goes out to public consultation. But actually before we’ve even started the working group, we go out to public consultation first. So before we even started, we go out to the world and we say, what do you like and what don’t you like about this standard? How can we improve it? Tell us, tell us how we can improve this. We take all of that feedback. We look at the trends and then we feed that into the technical working group and we say, right, this is what they’ve said about senior management commitment, how they want it improved. These are the things we must consider. Right everybody in the room. What do you think? How can we improve that? And we, we put, we go through that every single clause. We then come up with a draft that goes out to public consultation again. We take all of that feedback again. We then come up with a, you know, a final draft. We present that to the working group and again we go through everything and we debate and debate and agree what the final wording should be. But then we go through the publication process. And that actually is quite a lengthy process because we’ve got to make sure that the, that the English use, because that’s the master language that we print these documents in. We make sure that the English is easy to understand and easily translatable because you’ve got to remember we try, we will translate these standards into as many languages as is feasible. And in the meantime, we’re writing the interpretation guideline, which takes even longer. And then we write the key changes document and we try and publish everything at a time that is realistic for the sites and the auditors. So what I mean by that is we generally, we wouldn’t launch a new standard say in December because we know that that’s a time of year when a lot of people are on holiday and we don’t, it’s not fair for sites or even on the 1st of January, it’s not fair for sites to go, oh my goodness. You know, I’m, you know, I’m having a downtime and now I’ve got to think about a new standard. So we’re trying to be as considerate as possible for those dates. And then once the standard is launched, they have six months to actually understand the standard. But that six months is also used by us to update all of those other supplementary procedures that are all behind the scenes that people are probably not aware of. We spend, you know, so we, for example, we launched packaging materials issue seven on the 28th of October. We are still working behind the scenes to get all of the other quality management systems sites created for that. And, and we train the auditors on the certification body so that with that, that six months is also used to train all of the auditors and the certification body so they can update their systems. So it is a long process. And as to this working group, for example, I, you told me there around 30, 35 persons from all over the world, from Asia, from America, from Europe, from UK, from Germany, perhaps, and they are covering all kind of industries also that are, yeah, from packaging or from Oh, it depends. Yes. So for example, on packaging, we, we had to make what we did was we, we create a matrix of every single person who applies. We want to make sure that we have stakeholders represented from every sector. So manufacturers, we want definitely manufacturers of packaging. Now there are six or seven different packaging categories. So we need to make sure we’ve got people represented from say plastic, metal, glass, paper, different types of plastic, different types of printing inks and so on. And the same in the food industry, we have 18 food categories. So whether it’s raw meat, raw poultry, ready meals, beverages, chilled frozen, all of the different categories and risks. We try and get people from all of those categories on the working group because we want all of those categories represented. We need to hear what are the problems in the raw poultry industry or the ready meals and what are the problems that you have that we can solve. So what can we do to make your life easier? What can we do to solve your problems in relation to product safety? And we are going to build that into the standard. So please tell us, tell us in the public public consultation or tell us on the working group. We need that technical expertise. We need people who are willing to badger us and debate and tell us and challenge us about how we can make our standards stronger. So on that working group, yeah, we will look for about, say, 30, 40 people. We will have large manufacturers and we’ll have small manufacturers. So we’ll have people with lots of expertise, whether it’s in the UK, whether it’s in Thailand, whether it’s Australia or whether it’s Canada. We want everybody to participate. And will you be working together online or are you meeting in person? Well, generally now it’s virtual. I mean, yeah, I would be so lovely to do it, to do it face to face. But reality is now we’ve got to consider, you know, the cost of travel because we will have probably at least eight or nine meetings. And each meeting, like I said, is probably about six or seven hours long. And it’s a huge commitment for each member to do that. If you imagine this is happening and generally in quite a, you know, quite a short time. So it could be over maybe five months, six, you know, or even shorter sometimes, five or six months. And for those people, they volunteer their time for the goodness of food safety or product safety. So this goes back, they are contributing their time for free, for the better of food safety or product quality safety in the world. Okay. So, you know, they’re not, they’re not being paid for this. They do get recognition. We list everybody on the back of the documents so people can see who’s represented. Yeah. And we will try and listen to every voice in the room and we will take all that feedback. But not only that, the people who contribute from the public consultations, we do consider all of that feedback as well. They’d probably, what we don’t do is necessarily respond back to them individually, but we do actually capture that. And we actually literally go through it line by line and see, is this something that is, you know, for example, editorial. So maybe they said, oh, your grammar isn’t right there. We go, yeah, okay, we’re, you know, that’s for the editorial team to do. Or, you know, if there’s something we could take back to the working group and we let them decide, you’ve got to remember, it’s not us, BRCGS that are dictating this. It’s the working group who determine what goes into the standard. So basically, anybody from the relevant industry organizations could participate either in the heavy commitment, let’s say, with the working group, also participation light, just giving feedback on from the public consultation, right? Yes, absolutely. So anyone can contribute to the important thing is, is that we want people who are familiar, of course, with BRCGS standards. So if you’ve never worked in a, or, you know, worked with the BRCGS standard, then, you know, probably we’re not sure what value you would add. It’s very important that we have people who are very familiar with the standard and who have actually, you know, the more years you’ve got the better, but it isn’t about necessarily using the big, big, we ask, we want people who have got lots and lots of sites, but we also want the smaller sites because we want the smaller, less advanced, or less mature sites to also contribute. So because what we want to do is a balance. We’ve got to try and get a global standard. So there must be representation from every type of stakeholder. And is it, is it easy to find people to participate? Because I know from our clients that there’s a lot of pressure in the everyday demands of work. So I don’t know, is it easy or do you have? We are always delighted to be honest with the unarmed people who come forward to volunteer their time. We always have, like I said, on the packaging material standard that we launched last October, when we were doing that working group the year before, we had over 200 people apply and we had to whittle it down to about 35 or 40. Because what we’ll do is we will get it maybe down to 35 or 40. And then we say to people, okay, this is now the timeline that we’re working to. And some people might realize, oh, you know what? I can’t commit. So you might get a few people that then drop out. So we always have some people on standby as well. And we’ll go back to say, okay, now you win. But also, I mean, realistically, we can’t expect everybody to attend every single meeting. But what we do ask is can you at least attend 70 or 80% because it’s important that you’ve been chosen. And we really, really respect those people who have volunteered. We appreciate that it’s not always possible to attend. Things happen, of course. You know, we’re all humans. Things happen. You can’t always attend every meeting. But if you can’t attend a meeting, they can still put their opinions forward via email. And then we will discuss it in the meeting. So yeah, I mean, it’s amazing. We are always overwhelmed with, you know, we just really appreciate that people who do contribute. They are amazing. They really work hard. They really do. So given the variety of industries and global regions, your standards cover, how do you ensure that the updates that are made are both relevant and practically achievable? So that’s a bit the question. Is there at some point too much changes or how would you ensure that it’s still practically applyable? Yeah, I mean, that’s a really good question because first of all, we’ve got to make sure that, you know, this is a global standard. There are certain things that are a given. So we, you know, so for example, if it’s a GFSI benchmark standard, then it must comply with the requirements of GFSI benchmark. So that already determines certain things that we actually, you know, we must comply with. Our standards are also accredited to say, accredited by IAF or sort of certain accreditation bodies. So they will have requirements as well. And that might be, that might be related to, say, the protocol or the auditor qualifications. And so we must comply. So there are certain givens that we must comply with. And then there are, it depends then what is presented by the working group and by the public. So what do you actually want to see? And, you know, so we’ve, we will have debates around, you know, the importance of maybe say sustainability. So is that required in a food safety standard? Well, we need to decide and we had that discussion when we were developing food nine. Do we want to have sustainability included? And we debated it and debated it. And in the end, the conclusion was this is a food safety standard. So we want to, the focus must remain on food safety. I mean, there is a bit about weight waste management, but the focus is food safety. So we will have those debates in the room and decide, you know, which way do we want to go? We’ve got to, we again, because we’re covering 18 product categories, so everything from raw meat to raw poultry, fresh produce to high risk, you know, so say ready meals. Trying to get that balance is quite tricky. And that’s why we have, I’d say if you look at some of the standards, we have sort of additional requirements or additional modules at the end. And what we try and do is, is everybody must comply with the certain sections. So say the first, say six or seven sections of the standard. And then at the end, we will have additional requirements for those who want to go that little bit further. So we will try that approach. And that’s what we’ve done on food nine, say on the, on the risk zoning at the very end. Or we also have requirements for traded goods or on some of our standards on say, the storage and distribution ones, we have quite a few additional modules at the end, which you don’t have to if you don’t want to do. It’s kind of up to you, but that’s how we try and incorporate everybody’s requirements. That really sounds like you have a very demanding job, having this tricky balance. What is what you really love about your job? Why are you doing it? Oh, wow. I do ask myself that as well. Well I think, I think it probably just comes down to, and it’s, you know, we talked, mentioned earlier in the, the mission statement of our parent company, LGC is science for a safer world. And, you know, it’s actually quite relevant because now, now at this time of year, there is an awful lot of talk around women in science and science, you know, women, you know, it’s coming up to International Women’s Day. And so it’s quite nice to have an opportunity as a woman to have the opportunity to make a difference. Wow. Okay. So, you know, what the work that we do, it affects the globe. It affects food safety all over the world or product safety. You know, I talk about food because obviously food is what we mainly focus on, but we have, you know, we’ve got whatever it is, they’re 24,000 sites certificated to food, but we’ve got, you know, 6,000 in packaging and, you know, we have over 1,000 nearly in non-food as well. So, having the ability just to make sure that the world is a bit of a safer place for everybody. Oh, that’s lovely. You know, we look at the number of people who are affected by food poisoning in the world is phenomenal. You know, over 600 million people are affected by food contamination or poisoning every year and over 400,000 die and a lot of them are children. So the purpose of this, you know, I guess what keeps me going is that the work that I’m doing and that the team are doing, and my goodness, I have a fabulous team who do this work. They are there day in, day out, you know, doing all of this work is, is we just want to make the place, you know, the world a little bit safer. If we can just stop some of those food contamination and food poisoning incidents from happening, then we’ve made life better for a few people. Oh, I like that. And that, I guess, is what it’s all about. That’s true. So as a last question or a preliminary to the last question, are there any particular trends or innovations in food safety that you believe will significantly shape the future of our BRCGS standards? Oh, wow. Yeah, that’s always a great question. I think, I mean, the things that everybody is talking about is AI and how is that going to affect us? And I guess we’re all still trying to figure that out. I mean, there are certain aspects where AI can definitely help on the day to day kind of routine, regular checks and probably can be used in audit report reviewing. But there is something definitely happening with AI that we can’t ignore and that we do need to consider and understand and focus on. But I think other things, just, you know, the day to day things like, you know, deforestation, you know, so that’s a big, a big, I guess, a bit of legislation that’s coming in. It’s going to affect all of us, whether you’re in the food or the non-food industry. It’s something that we need to talk about and link to that as traceability systems. The other topics that people are continually talking about is fraud. Fraud is the issues with fraud affects everybody and affects every country. And it isn’t, you know, this is something that’s happening in our local communities, not as much as it is in the other parts of the world. So we need to keep focused on fraud because it’s very, very tough. It’s very tough to, it’s not, it’s very, we have to think like criminals when we are trying to address fraud and it’s not easy because we’re, it’s not the world we’re in, but we need to think like that. So fraud is always something that we’ll be focusing on, trying to make again, trying to, I guess, incorporate as much as possible into the standards going forward. But fundamentally, it’s always around food safety or product safety. And that’s an ongoing challenge for everybody. And just that little bit of continual improvement every year is what, is what we’re all about. So just making sure that, that we just focus on the day-to-day product safety. Okay. So as a last question, what is the one message you’d like stakeholders to understand about the standard development process? Okay. So Kwaiki, there’s lots of things, there’s lots of things, Iris. I think, I suppose, what the important thing is, is that everybody must realise is that actually everybody’s input is considered when we are developing a standard. Like we’ve said, we’ve talked about it is a very laborious process and a very long process developing a standard. And actually, it’s just, it’s much broader than the standard itself. It’s what people see as the standard, the actual documented self. But actually, we develop so much more, and that’s what we call it, you know, their programs and they’re not just standard. But our intention is always to develop the best possible standard. And it’s always there to deliver the needs of our stakeholders and to solve their problems. You know, really it is. And ultimately, I guess, just to make the world a safer place. Very well. Oh, thank you very much, Angela, for this interview. It was a pleasure to be talking with you. And you’re very welcome. I wish you all the luck for the next cycles you’re going through. Thank you. Thank you, Iris. It was a joy and a pleasure. And yes, thank you very much. Thank you for listening to Food Safety Talk. Stay tuned for more insights into the food supply chain. Until next time.