October 2014 Dear Valued Suppliers
October 2014 Dear Valued Suppliers The following communication explains, in detail, Sysco/FreshPoint’s produce food safety requirements. Sysco/FreshPoint’s collaboration with Azzule has been an integral part of Sysco’s food safety efforts for all areas of high risk produce products since 2007. Outlined below are the existing produce food safety requirements for Sysco/FreshPoint and changes to the existing requirements, which will be effective October 1, 2014. These mandatory requirements extend to all fresh produce items regardless of brand or label. Your cooperation and compliance is expected in order to begin or continue doing business with Sysco-owned companies. I. Existing requirements of the Sysco/FreshPoint produce food safety program: A. All suppliers of high-risk Ready to Eat (RTE) produce products must demonstrate compliance with Sysco/FreshPoint’s Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) requirements through successful completion of a GAP audit conducted by an approved Third Party Auditing Agency. The supplier must provide third party GAP audits for every high-risk RTE produce item they supply to Sysco/FreshPoint. For a complete list of approved Independent Third Party Auditing Agencies and high-risk RTE produce products requiring a GAP audit please refer to Appendix 1 and 2, respectively. B. All producers of high risk items such as deli salads, fresh cut fruits and vegetables, and sprout operations must demonstrate compliance with Sysco/FreshPoint’s third party Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) audit requirements by having an approved Third Party Audit completed for each facility (For a complete list of approved Independent Third Party Auditing Agencies and high-risk RTE deli salad, fresh cut fruits and vegetables and sprout products requiring a GMP audit please refer to Appendix 1 and 3, respectively). Sprout operations see point V. C. Both GAP and GMP points-based audits require a minimum score of 90% (All audits th performed prior to January 6 2014 scoring 85% or greater will be treated as compliant.) D. Complete, valid GAP/GMP audits must be transferred to the Azzule-managed Sysco/FreshPoint website. Suppliers must provide updated audits every 12 months – with a three month grace period - in order to maintain their compliance. Only compliant suppliers will be allowed to conduct business with any Sysco-owned company. II. What changes are being made to these requirements, and how will this affect me, a valued produce supplier to a Sysco-owned company? A. Audit timelines for acceptance will be changing from 18 months (GAP) and 13 months (GMP) to 12 months - with a three month grace period - to allow for the audit certification process to be completed. B. All produce packing sheds, cooling/distribution facilities, produce repacking and further processed facilities are now required to demonstrate full compliance with Sysco/FreshPoint’s third party Good Manufacturing Practices requirements (For a complete list of approved Independent Third Party Auditing Agencies and products/facilities requiring a GMP audit please refer to Appendix 1 and 3, respectively). III. How do I transfer my audits to the Sysco/Freshpoint website? Instructions for how to achieve full compliance with Sysco/FreshPoint’s produce requirements via Azzule are available at the following link: http://www.azzule.com/Services/Instructions.aspx A. Log in to your Azzule Supply Chain Program Account. Complete the registration process by simply clicking on the link below: https://secure.azzule.com/SupplyChain/SupplierRegistration/SupplierRegistration.aspx Approval Key: %Approval Key% Please use the above approval key where designated on the registration form. * Please note that the administrative team at Azzule will have to finalize the registration process before you receive your username and password via email. If you have forgotten your log in details, please use the password recovery function: https://secure.azzule.com/SupplyChain/SupplierRegistration/PassRecovery.aspx B. Use the Azzule Supply Chain Program to locate, upload/retrieve, and send audits to the Sysco/Freshpoint website. Once logged into your Azzule Supply Chain Program site, you will be able to see what audits, if any, are available in your archive. If you have identified that audits are missing from your archive, you will need to obtain them using one or more of the following methods: 1) Verify that all Primus Labs, PrimusGFS, and/or NSF Agriculture audits of yours are available in your archive. These audits should be transferred to your Azzule archive by the certification body. 2) For audits belonging to your vendors/growers, you may “retrieve” the report(s) by adding your supplier to your Azzule supply chain, and retrieving the audit. You can also request that your vendor/grower send the audit(s) to you via the Azzule Supply Chain Program. If they are not already registered, they can do so by contacting [email protected]. *Please note: if a supplier has a Primus Labs, PrimusGFS, and/or NSF Agriculture audit you need to submit to Sysco/FreshPoint, it will need to be obtained via Azzule, rather than manually uploaded, as described in the third option: 3) Under certain conditions you may “upload” the audit as a PDF file. This is a temporary allowance. PDF format is accepted for: BRC Global Standard th for Food Safety, CanadaGAP (GFSI options), GlobalG.A.P. and SQF (2000 and 7 Edition). Azzule and Sysco will notify your company when this temporary allowance changes. IV. Once you have the audits assembled on your site, the final step is to transfer them to Sysco/FreshPoint using the “send” function in the Supply Chain Program. V. Sprout Operations: All operations providing product to Sysco-owned companies are required to have a current GMP with HACCP audit. Audits must achieve scores of 90% or greater for points scored audit schemes from an approved third party auditing agency of Sysco/FreshPoint. Suppliers are responsible for maintaining audit compliance at all times ensuring all GMP with HACCP audits are current and transferred to the Sysco/FreshPoint GAP website For a complete list of approved third party auditing agencies please refer to Appendix 1. Website support: Contact [email protected] if you have questions about registering and using the Azzule Supply Chain Program. You have 30 days from receipt of this notification to become fully compliant with the requirements stated above. Sysco/FreshPoint Quality Assurance realizes that it may take some time for your company to schedule and complete the required GAP/GMP audits. If your company needs extra time to obtain and complete all the required audits deemed necessary to demonstrate full compliance of your program, you must provide Sysco/FreshPoint QA with an expected time frame for those audits to be completed and have it approved by Sysco/FreshPoint QA. Your company cannot be set up as an approved Sysco/FreshPoint corporate vendor until all required GAP and/or GMP audits for the items you will be selling to our companies have been successfully transferred to the Sysco/Freshpoint website. Failure to comply within the agreed upon timeline will result in Sysco/FreshPoint De-Authorizing your company as an approved Sysco/FreshPoint vendor. Please direct all technical questions concerning this Sysco/FreshPoint program to: Dave Podesta, Senior Manager Quality Assurance Produce, (480) 403-4850 Saul Morales, Director of Quality Assurance Produce, (831) 759-3352 Shane Sampels, Director of Quality Assurance FreshPoint, (281) 584-1313 Sincerely, Mark Mignogna Vice President, Quality Assurance Rich Dachman Vice President, Produce APPENDIX 1 Each audit will demonstrate 100% compliance for those questions that comprise the Critical Food Safety section of the audit and 90% compliance on all other sections/questions. (All audits performed prior to January 6th 2014 scoring 85% or greater will continue to be treated as compliant.) The following audit formats have been approved and meet the requirements of Sysco’s GAP & GMP Audit Program: AIB International Leslie Ackerman E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 785-537-4750, Fax: 785-537-0106 BRC Global Standard for Food Safety* Thomas Owen E-mail: [email protected] Phone: +44 20 7854 8939 CanadaGAP* (GFSI recognized options) Heather Gale E-mail: [email protected] Phone: (613) 226-4880, ext. 215 GLOBALG.A.P.* (IFA and PSS) Elmé Coetzer E-mail: [email protected] Tel/Fax: +27 (0) 12 991 51 39 NSF Agriculture Eileen Chase E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 831-740-4170 NSF Guelph Food Technology Center Soula Ringas E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 519-821-1246 ext. 503 PrimusGFS* Rebecca Burnworth E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 805-264-9043 PrimusLabs Debra Garrison E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 805-922-0055, Fax: 805-922-2462 SAI Global Violet Masoud E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 877-426-0714 Scientific Certification Systems, Inc. Heena Patel E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 510-452-8024, Fax: 510-452-8001 Silliker, Inc. Todd Dechter E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 708-957-7878, Fax: 708-957-8405 th SQF Institute* (SQF 2000 & SQF 7 Edition) Leann Chuboff E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 202-220-0635, Fax: 202-429-4519 United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Ken Petersen E-mail: [email protected] Phone: 202-720-4560 * BRC Global Standard For Food Safety, CanadaGAP, GlobalG.A.P, PrimusGFS and SQF audits can be completed by any certification body accredited to conduct these GFSI audits. Appendix 2 - GAP Products All high-risk, fresh, ready-to-eat, organic, transitional, & conventional produce, both whole and fresh-cut (value added): *following list is not comprehensive All Berries All Broccoli All Cauliflower All Cabbage All Celery All Chard All Cucumbers All Green Onions All Fresh Herbs All Lettuce & Salad All Melons All Micro Greens All Mushrooms All Peppers All Spinach All Summer Squash (for example Zucchini) All Tomatoes Appendix 3 - GMP Products All high-risk deli salads, fresh-cut fruits and vegetables, and sprouts – including all produce packing sheds, cooling/distribution facilities, produce repacking, and further processed facilities *following list is not comprehensive All Fresh-Cut Fruits and Vegetables All Deli Salads (potatoes, macaroni, coleslaw, etc…) All Apples and Pears All Avocadoes All Beets All Berries All Broccoli All Brussels Sprouts All Cabbage All Carrots All Cauliflower All Celery All Chard All Citrus (Grapefruit, Lemons, Limes, Oranges, Tangerines, etc…) All Cucumbers All Eggplant All Fresh Herbs All Grapes All Green Beans All Green Onions All Jicama All Lettuce & Salad All Mangoes All Melons All Micro Greens All Mushrooms All Onions All Papaya All Peas All Peppers All Pineapple All Potatoes All Radishes All Rutabaga All Salad All Salsa All Spinach All Squash All Sprouts (*GMP audit w/ HACCP required) All Stone Fruit (Apricots, Cherries, Nectarines, Peaches, Plums and all hybrids, etc…) All Tomatoes
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