Accreditation Bodies

Information on Accreditation and Accreditation Bodies

Accreditation bodies are the governing authorities that establish the suitability of any Certification Body's ability to carry out BRC audits by assessing their systems and procedures and monitoring their performance.

Before an accreditation body can accredit its Certification Bodies to evaluate against the BRC Standards it needs to establish if the process by which they grant accreditation is equivalent to that carried out by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS). It is important that every accreditation body accredits all Certification Bodies in an equivalent manner so as to ensure consistency of process and in the event of legal challenge a robust process can be demonstrated.

To evaluate against the BRC standards Certification Bodies will require an extension of scope for the relevant BRC Standard within EN45011 or ISO Guide 65 for each relevant Standard they want to audit against, namely:

• BRC Global Standard for Food Safety Issue 5

• BRC Global Standard for Packaging and other Packaging Materials Issue 3

• BRC Global Standard for Consumer Products Issue 2a

• BRC Global Standard for Storage and Distribution Issue 1 

Auditors are assessed against internationally recognized Standards to demonstrate their competence, impartiality and performance capability.
 

Please click here to download a list of Accreditation Bodies