Trade term
BRCGS Food Safety, and the grade on it
BRCGS Food Safety certifies a site where food is processed or packed, together with the food safety management running inside it. Alone among these schemes it prints a letter grade on the certificate, which means two suppliers who both answer yes to the same question on your approval form are offering you different things.
The figures
| What is certified | A named site and the activities written into its audit scope |
|---|---|
| Who owns the standard | BRCGS, part of the LGC group, out of British retail |
| How the result is expressed | A letter grade printed on the certificate |
| Recognition | Issue 9 recognised by the Global Food Safety Initiative since August 2024 |
| What sits outside it | The orchard, which is primary production |
| Our position | No site audited on our behalf, and no packing arrangement fixed |
What it changes on an order
Your approval form puts the same question to every supplier
Aim it at the packer. Put to a grower, the question worth asking is which site will pack the fruit and what that site holds.
Two offers come back with the same standard named
Read the grade and the scope line. Both sit on the document you were sent, and both get filed unread more often than anything else in the pack.
Your customer's policy quotes the global recognition
Recognition attaches to an issue and a date. A certificate issued under an earlier issue supports a narrower claim than the policy assumes.
What this note does not settle
- Nothing is certified here. No site has been audited on our behalf, and with no packing arrangement fixed there is no building to put on a form.
- A site certificate reports an audit window. It says nothing about the pallet loading next Tuesday.
- Requirements move between issues of the standard. Ask which issue an audit ran against before treating two certificates as equivalent.
Source: BRCGS, GFSI recognition of BRCGS Food Safety Issue 9
Two yeses that are not the same yes
An approval form collects a tick. Underneath the tick sits a certificate carrying a letter grade and an audit scope, and those two lines separate a site that came through an unannounced audit in good order from one that scraped a result with corrective actions still open. Both companies answer the question truthfully. Only one of them has told you much.
So ask for the document instead of the answer, then read three lines on it: the grade, the scope, and the issue of the standard the audit ran against. Recognition by the global umbrella attaches to a particular issue from a particular date, which means an older certificate carries a narrower claim than a policy drafted this year quietly assumes it does.
A certificate belongs to a building, and we name none
Assurance here attaches to a site. That is why the standard reaches into a packhouse and halts at the orchard gate, since growing has schemes and auditors of its own. Put the question to a grower and you get one of two unhelpful replies: confusion, or a certificate that belongs to somebody else's premises and was forwarded in good faith.
We hold none, and the second half of that answer matters more than the first. No packing arrangement is fixed, so there is no building to write on your form and no certificate to check even at one remove. Where your customer insists on a certified packer, settle it before anyone quotes a price, because it decides which other companies have to join the conversation.
Talk to the grower
Tell us the variety, the sizes and the delivery week you need. You get a delivered price and what we can commit to in writing, from the person who picks the fruit.
The grower handles enquiries. Response times are still to be confirmed.