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Certification & Compliance
‘Online exams and audits’
Certification & Compliance (C&C) makes sure GMP+ FSA and GMP+ FRA certificates are awarded in accordance with the GMP+ FC scheme. It does so by continuously monitoring the performance of Certification Bodies (CB’s). C&C is also responsible for the development and maintenance of the certification rules, harmonisation of the activities of CB’s and GMP+ auditors, and the examination of auditors.
Finding solutions – Remote auditing
Measures to reign in the coronavirus, like lockdowns, severely hindered our Certification Bodies to conduct on-site audits. “Immediately after travel restrictions were put in place, we worked together with CB’s to facilitate remote auditing. Together with them we experimented with remote audits to get it up and running. We kept in close contact with other feed schemes to secure feed safety and share best practices on remote auditing. Challenges remain, but we also learned a lot. On-site audits will stay, but they will be combined with remote methods going forward.”
Finding solutions – Remote auditing (2)
“In addition to CB’s auditing remotely, our own CB-, parallel- and witness audits had to be performed mostly digital as well. Every CB is audited once a year, we did this on-site when possible (19 times) or remote (16 times). For the CB’s and for us this was new, and took some getting used to. In 2020 we performed 36 parallel and 3 witness audit onsite – a lot less than other years. Unfortunately, in a lot of cases, remote audits were too difficult to execute.”
Ending live exams – Digital examinations
“It was not just a worldwide virus that made us move services online. Just like the introduction of the e-learning HACCP, digital examinations were also already in the works pre-COVID. Due to the pandemic all ‘live’ exams had to be cancelled. Beginning in March, 2020, all examinations of new auditors took place digitally. This has been a success and will be our way of examining from now on.”
Roland van der Post - Operations Director (Certification & Compliance)
