The National Food Safety Auditor (NFSA) Scheme, Australia
On the 1st May 2006 the Australian Government and RABQSA International launched the National Food Safety Auditor (NFSA) certification scheme.
The scheme represents a world’s first in terms of government and industry engagement on an issue of national importance involving food safety.
The scheme is the catalyst for the coming together of producer, supplier, regulator and retailer in the aim of unifying food safety standards, audit consistency and conformity assessment rationalization.
History of the NFSA Scheme
2004
RABQSA International was engaged by the Australian Government.
Requirements of the new scheme:
- Must define, measure and examine food safety auditor competence.
- Must recognize knowledge of existing and incoming food safety standards. i.e. ISO22000, SQF, BRC, Codex, etc;
- Specific to industry’s needs;
- Must address existing national training frameworks for food safety
- Must be accepted by all sectors of food industry in Australia
2005
The emergent scheme committee comprised 45 senior representatives:
- Regulators;
- Systems owners;
- Training providers
- Industry; and
- The conformity assessment community.
2006
- Final draft of the scheme and the training provider requirements were circulated and approved in February;
- Scheme launched in March;
- The scheme was included under RABQSA's scope of accreditation to ISO/IEC17024:2003 by JAS-ANZ in June this year.
The NFSA Criteria
The NFSA scheme reflects an innovative approach by combining:
- Knowledge competency;
- Personal attributes;
- Required auditor performance (Skill) competency; and
- Education requirements associated with each high risk scope, to determine auditor competence.
- A matrix formed the basis of the evaluation criteria;
- Risk of industry sector was evaluated and incorporated into auditor grades.
- Level 1 Compliance
- Level 2 Low Risk
- Level 3 Medium Risk
- Level 4 High Risk
The Benefits
The scheme provides the opportunity for industry to agree on increased harmonization of audit criteria and the frequency of audit, creating the potential for reduced audit requirements (and cost) throughout the food processing chain.
It allows regulators to outsource some of its lower risk auditing and inspection functions to industry. This encourages cross-pollination of knowledge, building understanding between regulator and industry.
NFSA opens the debate on second party supplier auditing, removing the need for supplier auditors to re-audit Food safety and concentrate on proprietary requirements.
NFSA provides opportunities for CAB’s to control and certify third party food safety audits; integrating supplier/retailer expectations and the inclusion of proprietary standards as scopes of risk levels.
NFSA’s future
It is the view of the Australian Government; the food production, manufacture and retail industries; and RABQSA that the national development of an accredited, competency-based, auditor certification scheme provides considerable benefits to industry.
By providing consistent and reliable assessment and certification of professionals working within the food safety certification industry, confidence and value are injected into a mature but inconsistent market.
Having the support and endorsement of government, industry and accreditation ensures the National Food Safety Auditor scheme will be successful, long-lived and purposeful. |
