BRC on US mission
The British Retail Consortium (BRC) is in the US this week on a mission to convince firms such as Wal-Mart and McDonald’s to adopt BRC Global Standards covering third-party supplier certification.
The move follows a recent announcement by Wal-Mart that it planned to use third-party inspection of suppliers rather than Walmart’s own inspection teams. Other US companies have also shown considerable interest in the US-based Safe Quality Food (SQF) certification standard, and the BRC hopes that its own standard, covering areas such as food hygiene, will be adopted in parallel.
The BRC’s tour of major retailers and foodservice businesses starts in Minneapolis today and ends the day after a half-day meeting with Wal-Mart on March 17. Before his visit last Friday, BRC director of global standards and technical service Dr Geoff Spriegel said that while SQF would inevitably be targeting this business, Wal-Mart would probably opt for two standards. “They wouldn’t want SQF to dominate,” said Spriegel. “They would like to see two standards competing so they get the best value.”
Around 9,000 companies in 90 countries have adopted the BRC Global Standard, while SQF claims around 8,000 certifications a year. The US is seen as a huge potential market for third-party certification since it has been much slower than retailers and others in Europe to adopt this approach. More global sourcing of products and recent high profile food safety incidents in the US have raised interest in third-party certification. This has been boosted by interest from the US government.
Like SQF, BRC will be moving to more online content for its standard to simplify use for suppliers, buyers and certifiers. SQF expects its online database to be ready by the end of July, although BRC will not be ready until early next year, said Spriegel. SQF also has a separate ethical trading module for its standard, but BRC has no plans to go down this route.
