Auditing in the Food Industry: From Safety and Quality to Environmental and Other Audits

The food industry faces an unprecedented level of scrutiny. Consumers are not just concerned about the safety and quality of food products but the way in which they are produced. At the same time the industry has developed new ways of assuring appropriate standards for its products and their methods of production, developing systems such as TQM and HACCP to identify and manage key steps in production. These new methods require new skills in auditing. Auditing in the Food Industry provides an authoritative guide to the range of standards and the auditing skills they require.

Part 1 sets the scene with an introductory chapter reviewing developments in standards affecting the food industry. This section goes on to detail how retailers audit their suppliers and how governments have moved from a traditional inspection role to one of 'regulatory verification' with its emphasis on auditing the robustness of a business's own systems for managing safety and quality. Part 2 looks at key aspects of safety and quality. It reviews of the ways retailers assess supplier HACCP systems and TQM systems, providing a context for discussion of auditing techniques for HACCP-based quality systems. It looks at standards governing the analytical methods used in safety and quality control. Part 3 considers newer standards and covers benchmarking an organization as a way of improving performance, auditing the impact of food processing operations on the environment, and auditing organic food processing.

Auditing in the Food Industry serves as a valuable guide to the range of standards facing the food industry and the ways it can audit, and thus improve, the quality of its performance.

About the authors: Mike Dillon is an internationally known authority on food quality and safety systems. A qualified auditor, he has developed training programmes on auditing and advised many leading companies. He has also written well-known guides to HACCP systems and auditing skills. Dr Chris Griffith is Head of the Food Safety Research Group at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, and a well-known authority on food safety management.