Companies operating in the food sector that establish and manage BRC Food, Food Safety System in their enterprises may apply to a certification body after a certain period of time and request certification. This period is generally foreseen as three months. At least the system must have gone through a period of implementation and necessary corrections have been made. Deficiencies identified during this time can be remedied or processes can be made more effective. Subsequently, a contract is made with a certification body and audit works are initiated. When applying to a certification body, the certification application form and certification instruction must be prepared first. Other than that, the company does not need to provide any other documents. However, a copy of the documents prepared during the system installation should be given to the certification body or placed in an environment accessible to this body. This is because the certification body will need this documentation for preliminary studies.
The certification body shall initiate the actual inspection work at the production facilities of the company following the preliminary audit work to be conducted over this documentation. When planning this study, the size of the company requesting documents and the number of employees are taken into consideration. In addition, if the company has production areas at more than one point, this is also taken as basis in the audit planning. As far as possible, all activities of the firm are observed in audit activities. It is important to determine the extent to which the company operates in compliance with the required standards. At the end of the audit, the auditors prepare a detailed report and submit it to the certification body. The certification body acts according to the results of this report when making its decision. As a result, if it is decided that the company deserves to receive BRC Food, Food Safety System Certificate, the certificate is issued and delivered to the company. The validity period of this certificate is three years, but the company's activities are continued to be observed every year by performing interim audits. If there are deficiencies in these inspections, they are requested to be corrected or it is possible to cancel the document.
