A lot of food businesses put real effort into their own BRCGS compliance and then don't apply anything like the same rigour to the suppliers feeding into them. That's a gap, and under BRCGS it's one you're expected to close through risk-based supplier assessment — but the real reason to do it isn't just compliance.
Supplier audits identify risk and gaps in your supply chain before they become your problem. And they're brand protection — because when something goes wrong at a supplier, it doesn't stay at the supplier. It becomes your recall, your customer complaint, your certification body asking questions about your due diligence.
This matters even more where specific claims are involved. Gluten-free, ready-to-eat, allergen-free — any claim that depends entirely on what's happening upstream needs a supplier who's been properly, independently validated against that claim, not just one who says the right things on a supplier questionnaire. An ISO or BRCGS lead-auditor-trained second-party audit gives you something a paper-based supplier approval process never can: someone who's actually stood in that supplier's factory and checked whether the claim holds up.
If your supplier approval process is mostly documents and self-declaration, it's worth asking where the actual risk in your supply chain really sits — because it's rarely where the paperwork is strongest.
