Food Safety Audits

Sentient offer comprehensive and cost effective, independent food safety audits designed to increase standards and improve food hygiene ratings.

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All food businesses have to ensure that whatever policies and procedures are in place are working as intended and that standards are being maintained. Regular food safety audits and monitoring through inspection is an essential part of this. Environmental Health Officers (EHO’s) can call on your premises unannounced and ask to inspect your food hygiene management system. The impact on your business of a poor food hygiene rating can be immeasurable.

Sentient’s food safety audits provide food businesses with a verification process and a Food Safety Management System. Food safety audits have proved to be a very successful technique of identifying problems in both the food supply chain and in processing of the food within the business. Our food safety audit team can act as contact points not only with Environmental Health Officers but also the food suppliers to provide the most cost effective way of solving any food hygiene issues.

Sentient offer a range of food safety audit, hygiene inspections and monitoring services:

• Food safety verification audit to assess the policies and procedures a business has in place and report on any areas in which improvement can be achieved
• Independent business level audits of food safety policies and procedures and their implementation within the business. This can be a food safety audit of individual procedures or a comprehensive audit of all relevant procedures
• Site food safety audits to monitor compliance with food safety procedures. This can be a one off or a regular programme of visits can be scheduled.
• For some clients we supplement their in house food safety audit program by carrying out audits of sample sites, thus verifying their own audit system and strengthening their due diligence
• Food safety audits to monitor hygiene standards on individual sites. This gives a quick review of standards on sites with less emphasis on procedures and more on what is visible with regard to staff activity and hygiene standards

Ongoing food safety auditing and monitoring of your Food Safety System is essential and forms a key part of our food safety audit service.

Our Annual Food Safety Audit and Ongoing Support Service includes: Regular food safety audits to check the system is working as it should (you decide the frequency)

• Staff training
• Annual review and update of your food safety management system
• Telephone investigations of customer food poisoning allegations
• Liaison if necessary with enforcement officers
• 24/7 advice on food safety matters and compliance with new and changed legislation

Food safety audit reports are agreed with clients in advance and can include comprehensive descriptive report focussed on client needs. Many clients are now moving towards an improvement action plan targeting specific issues, while others prefer food safety scoring audits and inspections in order that standards can be measured and trends monitored over time. Whichever type of food safety audit report is used, our consultants will work with you to ensure it is specific to your business problems and tailored to your organisations needs.

Our food safety audit consultants have enormous experience; previously have been environmental health officers. They all have considerable knowledge of developing, completing and verifying food safety audits, having worked with caterers, hotels, restaurants, healthcare establishments, and with a variety of food manufacturers.