Three members have written us this week asking the same question in three different ways: their Food Safety & HACCP Certificate renewal calls for an on-site verification visit, and none of them can get one scheduled. Auditors are pulling back from travel, some facilities aren't taking outside visitors at all, and a couple of members told us they'd rather not add a stranger's shoes to the plant floor this month regardless of what the calendar says.
We think that's the right instinct, and we don't want a credential lapsing because of it.
What's changing, specifically
If your Food Safety & HACCP Certificate renewal falls due between now and the end of May, and the reason you can't complete on-site verification is a documented site restriction or an auditor unable to travel, we're extending your current credential for 90 days past its listed expiration. You don't lose standing, you don't get flagged as lapsed in the member directory, and you don't need to re-sit any coursework to use the extension — you only need to complete the verification once it's reasonably possible to schedule one.
This is a grace window, not a waiver. The credential still has to be verified eventually, and the standard hasn't moved. We're recognizing that the scheduling of that standard has gotten harder, which is a different problem.
New applicants still need the same coursework and the same eventual on-site step — this extension only applies to renewals already in good standing. And this doesn't touch Competition Judge Accreditation, Certified Cheesemonger, or any of our other five credentials; those don't carry a site-visit requirement and their normal renewal timelines still apply. If you're not sure which category your own renewal falls into, our credentialing desk can tell you in a few minutes — that's faster than guessing and finding out wrong in May.
We're not the only ones drawing this line. The certification bodies that set the broader industry standard for third-party food-safety audits have been working through the same problem this month — how to hold the line on the standard itself while accepting that an auditor showing up in person isn't something every site can offer right now. Some are allowing a documented remote review to stand in for part of an audit; none of them are treating a missed visit as an automatic failure. Our 90-day window follows that same spirit rather than inventing our own rule out of nowhere.
If you want to keep moving anyway
A few members have told us they'd rather use a quiet spring to get ahead on coursework instead of just waiting out the extension. That's a good use of the time. Between the grace window we're describing here and the general jump we're seeing in course sign-ups this month, we'd rather you spend an evening in a course than watching a calendar. If your plant's slowed down enough that you've got a spare hour most nights, ask us what's open — we have more virtual seats than usual and no shortage of members using them right now.
This is also a fair moment to look at whether the credential you're renewing is still the right one for where your business is headed. A member who called us Tuesday about her HACCP renewal ended up asking about the Advanced Affinage Certificate instead, because she'd been meaning to formalize a skill she already has and this felt like the week to finally do it. We're not going to tell you to take on something new in the middle of a disruption. We are going to tell you that if you were already thinking about it, a slower few weeks is a better time to start than a normal one.
Whatever you decide, tell us before your renewal date, not after. A quick note now is a five-minute fix. A lapsed credential we find out about in June is a longer conversation for both of us, and it's one we'd rather not have.
The International Cheese Federation (ICF) and More Cheese are entirely fictional. This post is demonstration content created for MemberJunction. All people, organizations, events, courses, certifications, figures, and quotations in it are invented, and nothing here represents a real association, a real business, a real person, or real professional advice.