BRC

The British Retail Consortium (BRC) Technical Standard for Companies Supplying Retailer Branded Food Products was developed in 1998 to provide a common standard for companies supplying retailer branded food products. The BRC Technical Standard was developed by UK supermarket retailers to assist them in their fulfilment of legal obligations and protection of the consumer. In March 2003 the standard was renamed the BRC Global Standard – Food although it is still commonly referred to as ‘BRC Accreditation’.

What does the standard require?

• The adoption and implementation of HACCP
• A documented and effective quality management system
• Control of factory environment standards, product, process and personnel.

The standard contains a number of ‘fundamental, requirements which must be well established, continuously maintained and monitored by the company. The requirements deemed as being fundamental are Haccp, the quality management system, internal audits, corrective actions, traceability, layout / product flow / segregation, housekeeping & hygiene, handling requirements for specific materials, control of operations and training. Where a critical or major non conformance is raised against one of these requirements, this now leads to a full evaluation against the standard (i.e. another audit).

The standard is recognised by the majority of UK supermarket retailers, and is being increasingly used by food service companies to approve suppliers. The Brc standard was originally designed for manufacturers supplying own label products. It has also been used as a basis of supplier approval even when a company is supplying branded products only and in many instances it can be a pre-condition to supply certain companies. Food manufacturers are also using this standard as a basis of supplier approval and there are BRC certificated companies in many countries around the world.

One of its initial advantages was that it could reduce the number of food safety audits by each retailer and allow technologists to concentrate on other areas, such as product development, or specific quality issues. In practice, supermarkets may also insist on their own audits, particularly for high risk suppliers, or they may apply other codes of best practice in addition to the BRC standard. There is also a separate technical standard for companies manufacturing and supplying food packaging materials for retailer branded products.