Implementation of BRCGS Issue 9 for Food Manufacturing

Implement BRCGS Issue 9 properly, once, with the evidence to prove it.

Most BRCGS training tells you what the Standard says. This course takes you through building the system it asks for. You work through all nine sections of the Global Standard Food Safety Issue 9 in clause order, and at every stage you build the documented information rather than read about it.

Issue 9 was published on 1 August 2022 and it is what your certification body audits you against today. Issue 10 is still in development with no published release date, so nothing in this course is written against requirements that do not yet exist.

Watch a free lesson before you enrol

Five more free lessons from the course, each one taken straight from a module.

• BRCGS non-conformities: critical, major or minor, and how to close one, how findings are graded and how to close one with evidence the certification body accepts.
• Is it a CCP? The four HACCP decision tree questions, worked through, the four decision tree questions, worked through on a chilled raw material store.
• Root cause analysis: why operator error is never a root cause, a metal detector failure taken from “operator error” to a cause in the system.
• BRCGS allergen management: Section 5 and the allergen fundamental, what an auditor checks on one pack, and how allergen cleaning is validated.
• Food fraud vulnerability assessment: how to score a raw material, six factors scored on ground black pepper, from high risk to mitigated.

Watch all six in the free lessons playlist on YouTube. Enrolment unlocks the full course, every lesson and its videos, the three implementation tools, both audit exercises, the final assessment and your certificate.

What is in it

One hundred and thirty six lessons across thirteen modules, twenty four hours of structured work. Module 1 is the Standard itself, the audit protocol, the three audit programmes, the grading table and a twelve month implementation roadmap for a South African site. Modules 2 to 10 implement Sections 1 to 9 clause by clause: senior management commitment and the food safety culture plan, the HACCP food safety plan across all twelve Codex steps, the management system, site standards, product control, process control, personnel, production risk zones and traded products.

Every clause lesson answers the same four questions in the same order: what the clause asks for, how you implement it, what the auditor asks to see on the day, and where sites actually fail. Documents are named. Frequencies and owners are given. Nothing is left as “the site shall have a procedure”.

The twelve fundamentals, treated as fundamental

Clauses 1.1, 2, 3.4, 3.5.1, 3.7, 3.9, 4.3, 4.11, 5.3, 6.1, 6.2 and 7.1 are fundamental requirements. A major non-conformity against the statement of intent of any one of them means no certificate at that audit, whatever the rest of the score looks like. Four of them sit in Section 3 alone. This course flags every one of them and builds them first.

Tools, not templates

The food safety plan builder walks Section 2 in clause order, from the team and the product description through to the HACCP control chart, and it will not let you export until every significant hazard has a control measure, every critical control point has a measurable critical limit, every limit has its validation evidence, and every CCP has monitoring, a corrective action and a product disposition. The risk assessment engine runs fifteen registers on a five by five matrix, covering every risk assessment Issue 9 demands by name: food defence, food fraud, allergens, glass and brittle plastic, zoning, environmental monitoring, supplier approval, water, foreign body detection, chemicals, pests, storage and transport, maintenance, the high risk and high care zone decision and traded products. Both export to reports and CSV files laid out the way an auditor expects, and both save your work as you go.

Two exercises that behave like an audit

You audit a document set from a fictional Gqeberha ready meal and cooked meat site: twelve records, nine real failures and three decoys that look wrong and are compliant. For each one you decide whether it is a finding, cite the clause and grade it critical, major or minor. Then you walk the production floor and do the same across six scenes. The answer keys give the grade and the reasoning for the grade, not just the level.

The assessment is automated and it is not a memory test

One hundred and fifty questions in four parts. Parts 1 to 3 test the requirements at forty questions each. Part 4 is a practical exercise that teaches you to apply the Standard. You become the new Technical Manager of a fictional chilled ready meal and cooked meat site in Gqeberha and take it through six stages, from confirming the scope and running a fundamentals-first gap assessment, through a new slicer in the high-risk zone, the audit walk, rework and label control, to grading the findings, closing them out within 28 calendar days and rebuilding the management review, the culture plan and the internal audit programme. You need 70 per cent on each part and you have three attempts at each. Every question is marked the moment you submit and every answer carries an explanation naming the clause that settles it, so a wrong answer teaches you something. Twenty assessments in all, including a warm up game and a knowledge check in every module.

Who it is for

Food safety and quality managers, FSMS coordinators and HACCP team leaders implementing or maintaining Issue 9, internal auditors who need to audit against it, and consultants who implement it for clients. You need a working knowledge of food safety in a manufacturing environment. You do not need prior BRCGS experience.

Pricing

The course is R5,500, reduced from R6,950. No VAT is charged. Three attempts at each assessed part, a pass mark of 70 per cent, and a downloadable certificate on completion.