Consolidating current commercial requirements for processor audits

Summary

​The project identified two elements within commercial QAS that currently require multiple audits and that present opportunity for future consolidation. The two areas identified include animal welfare and BSE/SRM.
These elements were selected on the basis of stakeholder consultation with industry representatives.
Additionally, these elements presented a reasonable example to investigate issues surrounding multiple audits, due to the standards and activities for audit being similar. As these elements - animal welfare and BSE/SRM - are relatively new to the QAS environment and agri-food market, the number customers and certification bodies is still relatively small, compared to food safety per se.
Food safety consolidation will also be considered in this report, as recommended by industry stakeholders involved, however consolidating food safety requirements has already been investigated considerably in the literature.
Furthermore, the large array of difficulties associated with food safety consolidation, including the scale of difference QAS nationally and internationally, together with the larger number of players involved requires considerable investigation.
The need to address multiple QAS and audits has previously been acknowledged in the effort made by the British Retail Consortium to consolidate standards into a single international system. This objective is also currently being investigated as part of the Global Food Safety Initiative and some of the current efforts and considerations relating to food safety consolidation and multiple audits will also be referred to later in this report.