Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
compile the audit report at the conclusion of the audit. If the auditee' s employees
predominately speak a foreign language, the lead auditor may also ask for a translator
to be provided.
Audit Day
All audits start with an opening meeting and fi nish with a closing meeting. The auditee
(and/or client) management should be present at both meetings. At the opening
meeting, the lead auditor introduces the audit team, outlines the audit plan, discusses
timelines, requests documentation and records, and indicates that the audit team will
be interviewing employees, as necessary. Auditors interview employees to verify that
policies and procedures outlined in the food safety plan are being followed. It is gener-
ally benefi cial for the auditee to notify employees that an audit is scheduled and that
they may be interviewed by an auditor prior to the audit.
After the opening meeting, auditors have the discretion to go anywhere in the
operation at any time, but usually they request that the escort or guide bring them to
the beginning of the process to follow the product through to the end of the process.
For produce operations, the auditors usually start in the fi elds during harvest, and they
fi nish in a packinghouse or storage facility, depending on the scope of the audit. The
escort or guide should provide access to the facility, not lead the audit team through
“a dog and pony show” that may raise suspicions and cause the team to want to dig
deeper and fi nd out what the auditee might be hiding.
Once the fact - fi nding portion of the audit is completed, the audit team will meet
internally to discuss individual observations, review interview notes, and prepare the
fi nal audit fi ndings. Once that process is completed, a closing meeting is held. At the
closing meeting, the lead auditor will discuss the fi ndings of the audit and give the
auditee management the opportunity to discuss, clarify, or dispute any fi ndings, as
appropriate. A copy of the audit report is given to the auditee, and, depending on the
applicable audit standard, corrective action reports that require follow-up actions are
issued.
Corrective Action Reports
The auditor issues corrective action reports for any observations or records that indi-
cate noncompliance. Figure 17.2 shows a representative simple corrective action
report using the restroom cleaning example used earlier in this chapter. Depending on
the severity of the nonconformity, the corrective action report may require that the
auditee address the issue in a certain period of time or require that the auditor perform
a follow-up audit to verify that the auditee took appropriate corrective action to fi x
the problem. Corrective actions can be identifi ed as either short-term or root-cause
corrective actions. Short-term corrective actions are immediate steps to correct a
specifi c issue. Root-cause corrective actions are long-term actions that look to solve
habitual problems within a system. For example, an employee is found not to be
wearing a hairnet, and there is a policy for all employees to wear hairnets. A short-
term corrective action would be removing that employee from the area to put on a
hairnet. If there are multiple employees not wearing hairnets and the issue recurs and
is documented over a signifi cant period, a root-cause analysis would be done. This
analysis might show that the employees were not trained properly with hairnets, did
