BRC Certification

BRC are the British Retail Consortium, the company was founded in 1996 by retailers who wanted to harmonize food safety standards across the supply chain. BRC publish a family of standards referred to as BRC Global Standards and BRC certification is certified compliance with one of these standards. BRC Global Standards are used by over 25,000 certificated suppliers in over 130 countries worldwide.

The standards prescribe quality, safety and operational criteria to ensure that manufacturers fulfil their legal obligations and provide protection for the end consumer.

The following standards are available:

BRC Global Standard for Food Safety Issue 7
First published in 1998, the BRC Global Standard for Food Safety was the first GFSI benchmarked standard and is on of the leading food safety certification standards.

BRC Global Standard for Packaging and Packaging Materials Issue 5
The BRC Global Standard for Packaging and Packaging Materials was the first Packaging Standard in the world to be recognised by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GSFI) benchmarking committee.

BRC Global Standard for Storage and Distribution Issue 3
First published in 2006, the BRC Global Standard for Storage and Distribution is also a GFSI benchmarked standard. The latest edition Issue 3 was published in August 2016.

BRC Global Standard for Agents and Brokers
The BRC Global Standard for Agents and Brokers provides a framework for managing product safety, quality and legality for agent and broker businesses in the food and packaging industries.

Consumer products
Consumer Products Standards Issue 4 were published in 2016 and revised to recognise the diversity of products included within Consumer Products by producing two separate Standards
Global Standard for Consumer Products – General Merchandise
Global Standard for Consumer Products – Personal Care and Household
Each of the Standards can be certificated at either Foundation Level or at Higher level.

Retail
The BRC Global Standard for Retail was published in 2016 and provides a certification standard for organisations that retail food products