31 things to verify before you put food product in someone else's building.
Good Manufacturing Practices are a floor, not a target. A warehouse that meets GMP has met the minimum required to legally hold food, which is a different statement from being a good place to store your product.
The other thing worth understanding about how food regulation works: conditions in which contamination could occur are treated as contamination. Nobody has to prove that mold got into your product. A moldy building is the finding. That's why walking the warehouse matters more than reading the certificate, and why most of this list is about what you can see.
Use it on a tour, and ask for the documents before you go.
CERTIFICATIONS AND REGISTRATIONS
☐ Is the facility GMP certified, and can you see the current certificate?
☐ Is it registered with the FDA as a food facility, and is the registration current?
☐ Is it EPA registered, if your product falls under that?
☐ Does the operator hold a third-party audit such as SQF, BRCGS or AIB, and if not, will your own customers require one?
☐ When was the last audit or inspection, who performed it, and what was the result?
☐ Will they show you the actual report, or only the score?
☐ If you import, do they understand what your FSVP obligations mean for their records?
☐ Is there a current certificate of insurance, and does the coverage match the value of what you'll be storing?
THE BUILDING ITSELF
☐ Are floors, walls and ceilings sealed, intact and cleanable?
☐ Is there any standing water, active leak, or water staining on the ceiling?
☐ Are dock doors sealed when closed, with no daylight visible at the edges?
☐ Is lighting shatterproof or shielded over product areas?
☐ Is food product physically separated from chemicals, and from any non-food product that could contaminate it?
☐ Are pallets in sound condition, and is there a policy on broken or contaminated pallets?
☐ Are restrooms, break areas and locker space separated from storage?
☐ If your product needs temperature or humidity control, is it monitored, logged, and alarmed?
PEST CONTROL
☐ Is pest control performed by a licensed provider on a documented schedule?
☐ Is there a device map showing every trap and station, and are the devices where the map says?
☐ Do they get trend reporting, or just service tickets? A stack of tickets tells you somebody visited. A trend report tells you whether anything is getting worse.
☐ Is the exterior perimeter maintained, including vegetation, drainage and dock aprons?
☐ Are there bird exclusion measures inside the building?
SANITATION
☐ Is there a written master sanitation schedule covering what gets cleaned, how often, and by whom?
☐ Are cleaning records completed and current, or filled in from memory at the end of the month?
☐ Are chemicals stored separately, labeled, and are the SDS sheets accessible?
☐ Is there an allergen control practice, if your product or a neighbor's product carries allergens?
PRODUCT HANDLING AND TRACEABILITY
☐ Are lot codes captured at receiving, not just item and quantity?
☐ Can they rotate by FEFO or FIFO according to your requirement, and is it enforced by the system rather than by habit?
☐ Is there a documented hold and release process, and a physically segregated area for product on hold?
☐ Is damaged or rejected product segregated and dispositioned, rather than accumulating in a corner?
RECALL READINESS
☐ If you called today and named a lot code, could they identify every case of it and where each one shipped?
☐ When did they last run a mock recall, and what were the results?
☐ How long are receiving, shipping and lot records retained, and can they produce them on request?
What to do with this
Ask for the certificates and the most recent audit report before the visit. Then go and walk the building, because the paperwork and the floor do not always agree, and the floor is what your product lives on.
The single most useful question on this list is the recall one. Naming a lot code and asking what happens next tells you more in two minutes than an hour of discussion about certifications. An operation that captures lot codes at receiving and can trace them out answers immediately. One that can't will start explaining.
If a warehouse hasn't run a mock recall recently, that's worth pressing on. It isn't a hard exercise and there's no good reason not to have done one.
Where we stand
Clark is GMP certified, FDA registered and EPA registered, and we hold food and beverage product for customers whose own auditors come through this building. We run mock recalls twice a year as part of maintaining GMP certification. We'd rather you tour than take our word for it, and the tour is usually what decides it. The thing visitors comment on most consistently is how clean and organized the operation is, which is not a claim that means much in writing and is obvious within five minutes of walking the floor.
If your customers require a third-party certification we don't currently hold, tell us early. That's a real answer either way and it's better to have it before you move product than after.