Food Safety
Integrating Business Continuity into Supplier Audits in the Food Sector
by Erasmo Salazar • July 30, 2025 • 3 min read
Auditing suppliers is essential to ensuring the consistent delivery of safe, high-quality food products. While most supplier audits focus on food safety controls and compliance with customer requirements, a more strategic and preventive approach includes evaluating the supplier’s ability to continue operations during disruptions.
One-day supplier audits are common in the food industry, and with limited time, auditors are expected to focus on the most critical areas. Traditionally, this means assessing how food safety hazards are controlled. However, in recent years, events such as pandemics, labor shortages, raw material disruptions, and extreme weather have highlighted the need to go beyond food safety and look at whether a supplier can continue to operate under stress.
A supplier without a plan to manage disruptions could delay production, create product shortages, or in worst cases, resort to unsafe or fraudulent practices to meet demand. This creates risk not just to product quality, but to brand reputation and consumer trust.
Understand the Supplier's Role in Your Business
Before the audit even begins, it’s important for the auditor to understand how critical the supplier is to their organization. Is the supplier providing a single-source ingredient? Is there limited capacity to switch to another source? Have they experienced recent delays or instability?
The best use of limited audit time is to focus on what matters most. If a supplier provides a unique product, has a history of delays, or operates in a region vulnerable to disruption, these are good reasons to explore their continuity planning during the audit.
This context helps the auditor prioritize which topics to cover and how deeply to assess the supplier’s ability to maintain operations under stress. High-risk suppliers, either because of their role in the supply chain or their past performance, deserve more attention during the audit.
Key Questions to Include in the Audit
Auditors don’t need to perform a full business continuity assessment, but they can include a few simple questions in their audit to gain insights into the supplier’s resilience. For example:
- Does the supplier have a plan to respond to unexpected events such as fires, equipment failure, or supply shortages?
- Have they identified their most critical materials, suppliers, and services?
- Do they have backup suppliers or alternate sources of ingredients?
- How did they respond to recent disruptions?
- Are employees aware of their roles during emergencies?
- How do they communicate with customers during an unexpected event?
Even a brief discussion on these topics can help paint a clearer picture of the supplier’s ability to deliver consistently.
Start Incorporating Business Continuity in Your Supplier Audits
Food companies can no longer afford to treat business continuity as a separate or optional activity. Whether you're conducting a supplier audit next week or planning your next audit schedule, start incorporating a few focused questions on continuity planning.
Your audit doesn’t need to be perfect—but taking this first step can help you spot early warning signs, strengthen your supply chain, and protect your brand.
If you'd like help developing a supplier audit program or training your team on how to integrate these topics into your audit process, feel free to reach out.