1 Introduction

Initially served as the supplier standards for retailer branded food, BRC certification is developed and granted by British Retail Consortium (BRC) and its standards are widely applied to other sectors in the food industry and adopted as the basic structure of supplier assessment procedures of many companies. As world’s advanced standards, BRC standards have been adopted by over 22000 suppliers from 123 countries as the reference to assess the product quality, safety and operational criteria. BRC standards are the first and the most adopted standards by GFSI. Over 15000 sites are certified by BRC.

BRC Global Standards including the following categories: Food Safety, Packaging and Packaging Materials, Consumer Products, Storage and Distribution, Agents and Brokers. Among them the food safety certification applies to food production or branded retailer primary product, branded food and food service company, catering company and food or ingredient used by producers.

      2 Benefits

(1) Favorable credibility, enhance the public’s confidence in your food safety program and supply chain management;

(2) Achievable and cost effective;

(3) Good compatibility with other standards and certification such as ISO 22000, HACCP, FSSC and so on.

3 Scope

4 Certification requirements

Certification mode: on-site audit + follow-up inspection

Certification lead time: it depends on number of employees, the scale of the factory, number of HACCP projects, complexity of production process, labor intensity and number of production lines. Normally, it will be 2 man/days.

Validity of certificate: one year