BRCGS Plant-Based Issue 1 for Management Course

A plant-based claim is a promise your customer cannot check. The Standard wants to know who in your business keeps it.

Nobody can see a lactose carrier in a seasoning, a fish-derived fining agent in a vinegar or a shellac glaze on a sweet. The shopper trusts the mark on the pack, and the mark is only as good as the decisions behind it. Most of those decisions are not made in the laboratory. They are made by a buyer who takes a cheaper pea protein from an unapproved broker during a shortage, by a planner who trims the clean between a dairy run and a vegan run to fit in one more batch, and by a marketing team that puts the plant-based logo on a social media post for a product that was never listed on Schedule A. The Standard treats every one of those as a management responsibility.

BRCGS Plant-Based Issue 1 for Management is a four-hour course for directors, owners, site managers and department heads who control money, time and priorities on a site that makes, or wants to make, certified plant-based products. It explains what the Plant-Based Global Standard, Issue 1, expects of senior management, how the plant-based management system you resource actually works, which supply chain and claims decisions carry your signature, and how a pass-or-fail certificate is won and kept.

What the course covers

Five modules: the Standard and what it expects of management; senior management commitment and the plant-based management system; the supply chain and the claims you sign off; operations, incidents and complaints; and certification, the audit and keeping the claim.

Every module ends with a worked case study from a fictional South African site, a knowledge check and a scenario game built on decisions a manager actually faces: whether a product may carry the mark, what to do with a week of change requests before an audit, which control should catch a supply chain risk. The course closes with a final assessment: 40 questions drawn at random from a bank of 50, so every attempt is different. 45 minutes, 70 percent to pass, 3 attempts. An ASC certificate is issued on passing.

This is an independent ASC Food Safety course explaining the requirements of the Plant-Based Global Standard, Issue 1, in our own words, with clause references so you can look up the exact wording in your own copy of the Standard. It is not a BRCGS course and it is not endorsed by BRCGS. The certificate is a course completion certificate; it is not a BRCGS qualification and does not indicate BRCGS certification of any site. This course also does not replace BRCGS’s own Plant-Based site training course, which the Standard requires your qualified individual to have passed.