Intake checks and receiving materials

Intake checks and receiving materials

This article explains what intake checks must be carried out when you receive materials. It applies to the intake of ingredients, packaging and other raw materials which are required to process the product.

Contents

• The standards.
• The requirements.
• BRCGS Food Safety Issue 9.

The standards

This article is written to explain the requirements of intake checks in the following standards:

The requirements

Intake checks – procedure

To ensure that materials are checked in compliance with the standard, you need a procedure for intake checks, which includes how materials are accepted and who is responsible for doing the checks. Where the checks require assessment, staff must be provided with and trained to the acceptable limits that they must use.

If materials don’t comply, the procedure also needs to explain what to do with the materials and how to record the non-conformance. There must also be a designated person(s) who is authorised to either accept or reject the materials.

Risk assessment

Intake checks must be carried out to ensure that the materials meet specification. To work out what’s required you need to carry out a number of risk assessments and compile the results from your:

• Material and product risk assessment.
• Inspection and testing risk assessment.
• Vulnerability assessment.

Minimum acceptance intake checks – for the material

The acceptance procedure must include what checks must be carried out on the materials, to ensure that:

• The right material and quantity have been delivered.
• The material matches the specification.
• The shelf life is acceptable.
• Traceability can be maintained.
• The material is checked based on risk assessment (see above).
• There’s no damaged packaging.
• Pallet condition.

Records of the checks that have been carried out must be kept.

Intake checks – inspection and testing

Where checks are required, the following must be in documented in a procedure:

• The method of testing or inspection.
• How often it should be done.
• The acceptable limits.

Where monitoring is carried out on materials, which isn’t to a calendar routine (once per day, once per week), but rather to a percentage of deliveries for example, there must be a mechanism in place to ensure that this monitoring isn’t forgotten or missed.

Minimum acceptance intake checks – materials with claims

Where the incoming material has a claim that’s been identified as a risk in the vulnerability assessment, the material must be checked to make sure that the material that’s been delivered does have this claim (i.e. there hasn’t been a mistake). Evidence can be through:

• Certificate of analysis.
• Certificate of conformity.
• Statement of compliance.

Minimum acceptance intake checks – for the vehicle

The vehicle that delivered the materials must also be checked for:

• Hygiene; cleanliness, contamination and signs of pests.
• The delivery is secure and hasn’t been tampered with (seals).
• That the holding area temperature is within the acceptable limits.

Temperature

Where temperature is deemed critical through risk assessment this must be checked on delivery before acceptance. The best way of doing this is to check the temperature in the following order:

1. Check the holding area air temperature before opening the load. If this isn’t right, go to step 2.
2. Carry out a destructive or non‑destructive* check of the material. If this isn’t right, reject the load and find out how long the temperature has been out of specification for, in step 3.
3. Review the vehicle temperature monitoring records, such as thermographs.

*A destructive check is where the product has to be put to waste afterwards. A non-destructive check means that the product hasn’t been damaged or contaminated, so it can be used.

Live animals

Where you receive delivery of live animals, an inspection must be carried out by a suitably competent person, at lairage and post-mortem to ensure that the animals are fit for human consumption.

BRCGS Food Safety Issue 9

The word authenticity has been added to clause 9.3.3, which means that you must now consider new authenticity risks, and determine which ones aren’t acceptable, when developing products.

For more information is available about the changes in BRCGS Food Safety Issue 9 here.