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BRCGS: Brand Reputation through Compliance Global Standards

BRCGS Food Safety is a GFSI-recognised certification standard that grades a site rather than simply passing it, which is what distinguishes it commercially: a customer can read the grade on the certificate and infer how the audit went.

What it is
Certification scheme
Published by
BRCGS, part of LGC
GFSI recognised
Yes
When it started
1998, as the BRC Food Technical Standard
Where it is used
United Kingdom retail and its supply base, accepted widely beyond it
Issue Krolda maps
Issue 9

What BRCGS is

BRCGS began as the British Retail Consortium's technical standard and is now owned by BRCGS, part of LGC. It is one of the most widely held certifications in United Kingdom and European retail supply, and it is common in North America.

The standard is organised around a set of fundamental requirements that carry more weight than the rest. A non-conformity against a fundamental is treated more seriously than the same finding elsewhere, and enough of them can result in no certificate being issued at all.

Audits produce non-conformities graded by severity, and the certificate carries a grade derived from the number and severity found. Announced and unannounced audit options exist, and taking the unannounced option is itself a signal to customers.

The subject areas a site is audited on include senior management commitment, the food safety plan, food safety and quality management systems, site standards, product control, process control, personnel, and requirements for production risk zones where relevant.

BRCGS publishes several standards beyond food safety, including packaging materials, storage and distribution, agents and brokers, and plant-based products. A certificate names the standard and its issue, and a customer requirement naming BRCGS usually means the food safety standard unless it says otherwise.

From the British Retail Consortium to BRCGS

The standard was written in 1998 by the British Retail Consortium, the trade association for United Kingdom retailers, for the same reason IFS was written in Germany five years later: retailers were each auditing the same suppliers against their own requirements, and a shared standard removed the duplication while keeping the requirements retailer-led.

It was published as the BRC Food Technical Standard, became BRC Global Standards as the family widened past food, and is published today as BRCGS, for Brand Reputation through Compliance Global Standards. The business was acquired by LGC Group in 2016, so the standard is now owned by a science and measurement group rather than by the retail association that wrote it.

Issues are numbered rather than dated. Issue 9 of the food safety standard was published in 2022. This page does not state which issue is in force, because that changes and a reference page that asserts it is wrong the day the next one publishes; the owner publishes the position.

The grade, and what the plus means

BRCGS grades rather than scores. The outcome is a letter, and the letter is determined by the number and severity of non-conformities raised: critical, major and minor are distinct categories, and a single critical finding changes the outcome rather than costing a proportion of a total. The grades run from AA at the top down through A, B and C to D, with an uncertificated outcome below that.

A grade carrying a plus indicates that the audit was unannounced rather than announced. This is the practical reason to read a certificate rather than the grade alone: AA and AA+ are the same performance under different conditions, and a customer that specifically wants unannounced assurance is asking for the second.

Grade also sets the audit frequency. Better grades earn a longer interval before the next audit; poorer ones shorten it. That is the mechanism that gives a grade commercial consequence beyond the certificate wording.

The BRCGS family, and which one a customer means

BRCGS publishes a family of standards for different points in the supply chain, including food safety, packaging materials, storage and distribution, agents and brokers, consumer products, plant-based, gluten free and ethical trade. They are separate standards with separate certificates.

A purchase order or a supplier questionnaire that says only BRCGS almost always means the food safety standard. A warehouse cannot hold it: a third-party storage site is certified to storage and distribution, and a business that only buys and resells without handling is certified as an agent and broker. Sending the wrong certificate is one of the more common reasons a supplier approval stalls, and it is a scope error rather than a compliance one.

How certification works

A site is audited by a certification body accredited for the standard. The audit is against the issue in force, announced or unannounced depending on the option chosen, and results in a graded certificate with a defined validity period.

Non-conformities have to be closed out within a set window, with evidence, before the certificate is issued. Which evidence satisfies which non-conformity is exactly the work Krolda exists to make traceable.

GFSI recognition

BRCGS Food Safety is a GFSI-recognised certification programme. Check the current recognised list and scope at mygfsi.com.

GFSI does not certify anybody and there is no GFSI certificate. What GFSI recognition actually means.

Where this meets United States regulation

A site selling into the United States is held to 21 CFR whether or not it holds a certification. These are the parts that bear on BRCGS, reproduced in full on this site because title 21 is United States public domain.

What goes wrong in practice

Certification is a statement about a system on the day it was audited. FDA recall records are what happened afterwards, across the whole industry, and these are the hazards that appear most often in the records a plan built to BRCGS is meant to control.

What Krolda does with BRCGS

BRCGS sells its standard and polices redistribution, so Krolda maps BRCGS by clause identifier and its own summaries only, and hosts none of its text. That is a copyright constraint rather than a product limitation: a certified site already holds its own copy of the standard, and the work is matching that site's documents to clause identifiers.

Krolda maps Issue 9, checked against the owner’s own publication on 2026-09-13. Issues and editions change and this page does not claim to know which is current: BRCGS, part of LGC publishes that.

Questions

What does BRCGS stand for?
BRCGS stands for Brand Reputation through Compliance Global Standards. The organisation began as the British Retail Consortium's technical standards body and is now part of LGC. Its food safety standard is one of the certification programmes recognised by the Global Food Safety Initiative.
What are BRCGS grades?
A BRCGS audit produces non-conformities graded by severity, and the certificate carries a grade derived from how many were found and how serious they were. The grade is visible to customers, which is why it carries commercial weight beyond the certificate itself. An unannounced audit is a separate option and is also visible on the certificate.
Is BRCGS free to read?
No. BRCGS sells its standards and actively polices redistribution of their text. This is the reason Krolda maps BRCGS by clause identifier and its own summaries rather than hosting the standard, and the reason no page on this site carries a line of it. FSSC 22000 and IFS Food publish their schemes free by comparison, and 21 CFR is public domain.

The other standards

A BRCGS audit asks for the evidence behind each clause, and finding it is the work. Krolda maps supplier documents to the clause they satisfy in FSSC 22000, IFS Food and 21 CFR 117, and routes the corrective action when the evidence is missing.

Early access

Recall records come from the openFDA food enforcement API, published by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the public domain. Krolda adds the hazard classification and the clause mapping; neither is an FDA determination. Always check the FDA notice before acting on a recall.