---
title: "What actually happens during a Costco food safety audit"
description: "A Costco food safety audit runs 1-2 days, is capped at $2,300 a day, and ends on a 14-day corrective action clock. What happens, from Costco's V3.0 documents."
canonical: https://fsma204hub.com/blog/costco-food-safety-audit
published: 2026-09-09
---

# What actually happens during a Costco food safety audit

> A Costco food safety audit runs 1-2 days, is capped at $2,300 a day, and ends on a 14-day corrective action clock. What happens, from Costco's V3.0 documents.

Most of what you will read about a Costco food safety audit describes a program that no longer exists.

Costco replaced its supplier audit expectations with **Version 3.0, effective September 1, 2025**. V3.0 halved the audit window, handed the announced/unannounced decision back to your scheme, made the Costco GMP audit longer, capped the day rate, deleted an entire audit type, and brought the Addendum back. Consultant pages, certification body blogs and even scheme-owner guidance still on page one of Google describe V2.0.

This post walks the audit event in the order it happens, from Costco's current documents, noting where the published text contradicts the rest of the internet. Where Costco publishes nothing, it says so rather than filling the gap.

On sourcing: Costco distributes these documents through a share link search engines cannot crawl, which is much of why stale copies outrank current ones. The versions cited below are Costco's own documents as published through **Azzule Systems**, named in Costco's document as its designated database provider for produce audits. Both carry Costco's share link and the FSA@costco.com address:

- [Global Food Safety Audit Expectations for Costco Suppliers, Version 3.0](https://azzule.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Food-Safety-Quality-Audit-Expectations-V3.pdf) (27 pages)
- [Costco Addendum V3.0 (2025)](https://azzule.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Costco-Addendum-V3.0-2025.pdf), the auditor's form (7 pages)

## 1. Who is actually standing in your plant

Not a Costco employee, usually.

Costco publishes a **closed list of approved certification bodies**, and the rule is absolute: "Costco audit standards may only be performed by Costco approved certification bodies." The North America and Australia/New Zealand list runs to roughly 30 names, among them AIB International, BSI, Bureau Veritas, Eurofins, Intertek, NSF, SGS and UL Solutions.

The trap is regional. Those lists are published per region, so if you ship to Costco in more than one region your CB must be approved by **every** region you ship to. Pick a local CB on price, land a second-region order, and you find out after the audit is booked.

One auditor does both jobs. "The Costco Addendum must be performed in conjunction with the GFSI Certification audit," and the CB "may allocate 1-2 audit hours and charge their standard rate for additional audit time." One visit, two hours longer, billed for both.

Where Costco does appear in person is the **shadow audit**. A Costco Food Safety staffer accompanies the auditor for the entire duration, examines all the documentation the auditor reviews, and walks the whole operation, interior and exterior. Their observations are disclosed **after the closing meeting**, do not affect your score, and still require a corrective action response by email. The meeting where you thought the audit ended is followed by a second set of findings you owe an answer on.

Costco can also open its own audit immediately after a recall, a serious incident, or what the document calls a "Costco concern," outside the anniversary timeline.

## 2. How you find out it is happening

This is the most out-of-date claim on the internet about Costco.

**The correction:** V3.0 states plainly that "facilities must follow their scheme requirements on announced/unannounced audits," and the change log records it as "Announced vs Unannounced Audits: Deferring to Scheme requirements." On SQF, BRCGS, FSSC 22000 or IFS, **your scheme's rules decide**. There is no blanket Costco unannounced mandate on top. Scheme-owner guidance and several CB pages still say otherwise. That language is V2.0.

The unannounced rule that does exist applies to **Costco's own** Food Safety/GMP audit, which "must be unannounced and conducted within a 60-day audit window from the date of the previous audit (30 days before/after the audit anniversary date)." That window was 90 days under V2.0. One exception: the **Introductory** Costco audit "will always be announced as it is intended to be an introduction to Costco's food safety program."

Blackout dates are your only lever, and it is narrow. Your CB requests them at scheduling, and Costco restricts them "strictly to non-production days," stating they "will not be granted for any other reason." Absent one, **every day inside the window is an audit-ready date**, and if the auditor arrives while you are not operating you reschedule inside the original window at your expense.

Same category of stale guidance: the **Small Supplier Audit**, and the under-25-employees rule attached to it, was deleted in V3.0 and replaced by the Introductory Costco GMP audit, which requires Costco pre-approval. A page offering a small-supplier route based on headcount is a year out of date.

## 3. The clock and the bill

Costco publishes both, which is unusual for a retailer program.

**Duration.** "The majority of Costco Food Safety/GMP audits can be completed in 1-2 onsite audit days." Under V2.0 it was a single day. The Addendum is 1-2 hours on top of a GFSI audit, not a separate day.

**Who pays.** You do: auditor time, travel, and administration.

**The cap.** "The total cost of each audit day, including all reimbursable expenses plus 10%, will not exceed $2,300 USD." New in V3.0, and useful leverage, because it is a guaranteed maximum per day with expenses inside it.

**The quote rule.** Your CB must give you an estimated duration and an all-inclusive cost **before the audit commences**. If your booking arrived without a number, ask, and hold the $2,300 ceiling next to whatever comes back.

## 4. How the day splits

Costco publishes **no hour-by-hour agenda**. Any schedule telling you opening meeting at 8:00, records at 9:30, floor at 11:00 is describing typical CB practice, not Costco policy.

What Costco does publish is more interesting. The Addendum form makes the auditor record, on the form itself: Total Number of Hours On Site, Number of Hours With Records, Number of Hours In Facility (Interior/Exterior), and Announced? (Yes/No). Costco forces the **records-versus-floor split onto the permanent record**, which tells you what to expect: not a walkthrough with paperwork attached, but an audit that formally accounts for desk hours. The nearest thing to a published sequence is the shadow-audit paragraph, naming three phases in Costco's words: documentation review, an inspection walking the entire operation interior and exterior, and a closing meeting.

The records requirement underneath all of it is the one that ends audits. Costco's critical finding list includes **fewer than 60 days of operational records preceding the audit**. Not incomplete records. Fewer than 60 days of them. A facility that restarted a log book after a system change can fail on that line alone while making perfectly safe product.

If your audit window opens in the next 60 days, confirm this week that you can physically produce 60 continuous days of operational records. That is a critical finding, not a scored deduction, and good performance elsewhere does not offset it.

## 5. The 13 questions and the 65 points

The Costco Addendum V3.0 is **13 questions, numbered 3.1.1 through 3.1.13, worth 65 points** (13 at 5 each), scored 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0 or N/A. The traceability clauses are pulled apart in [the Addendum teardown](/blog/costco-addendum-traceability-requirements); here is the scoring machinery.

Question **3.1.13 is Pet Food Only**. Cheese, nut butter, sauces or fresh-cut produce means you answer 12 and mark one N/A. Claim it rather than letting it sit.

The scoring is **element counting, not auditor judgment**. Each question contains a number of required elements, and the score falls out of how many you missed:

| Elements in the question | More than 3 missed | 3 missed | 2 missed | 1 missed | All fulfilled |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| More than 3 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| 3 | N/A | 0 | 2 | 4 | 5 |
| 2 | N/A | N/A | 0 | 3 | 5 |
| 1 | N/A | N/A | N/A | 0 | 5 |

Read the bottom row. A one-element question is **5 or 0**, which is why "we mostly do that" does not score. On top of the matrix sits a repetition penalty, with published definitions: a **single** occurrence is 1, an **isolated** issue is 2 and costs an extra point, a **numerous** issue is 3 or more and costs an extra two. Comments are mandatory below 5, and auditors may apply discretion for severity.

Now the part most guidance gets wrong by omission: **Costco publishes no pass score for the Addendum.** Costco states it "is for informational purposes only and has no impact on the GFSI Certification Program outcome," and every scheme row says "Costco Addendum CAP required, regardless of overall score." It is not pass/fail, it is corrective-action-always. If a page quotes you an Addendum minimum, ask where it is published.

Pass and fail live on the audit underneath it, and those thresholds are published:

| Audit | Threshold |
|---|---|
| Costco Food Safety Audit / GMP | 85% or above overall **and** per category, no critical findings |
| SQF | Preliminary score 86 or above |
| BRCGS Food Safety | Preliminary grade B or above |
| FSSC 22000 | Certification plus annual onsite surveillance audit, full report to Costco |
| IFS Food | Preliminary score 85 or above |
| PrimusGFS, CanadaGAP, GlobalGAP, Freshcare | Successful certification |
| Primus Standard GAP/GMP | Overall total 85% or above |
| Introductory Costco GMP | 75% or above overall and per category, first year only |
| Global Markets (SQF Fundamentals, BRCGS Start!, IFS Progress, FSSC Development) | Intermediate level 80% or above, first year only |
| **Any audit type** | **Corrective action plan required for any score under 98%** |

One point stays unresolved. Costco's text says the Addendum has no impact on the certification outcome. Practitioners in industry forums report the opposite: Addendum findings written up as scheme non-conformances that do deduct from the SQF score, because SQF requires meeting customer requirements. Costco has published nothing reconciling the two, so plan for the stricter reading.

## 6. The traceability exercise, the part you can fail live

Everything else is evidence you prepared in advance. Clause 3.1.5 is a test you sit in the room.

It requires at least **two traceability exercises**, conducted independently during the year, covering two of three areas (finished goods, raw materials and ingredients, primary packaging). The **third area is chosen by the auditor** and run live on the day. Every exercise closes within **2 hours** and accounts for **100%** of the selected sample. Clause-level detail is in [the Addendum teardown](/blog/costco-addendum-traceability-requirements).

The exemption most producers never claim: evidence 100% recovery in under 2 hours across **all three** areas since your last audit and no live test is required on the day. Two rehearsed exercises leave you exposed to the auditor's pick. Three retire the live test, for the price of one extra afternoon a year.

What fails here is rarely the clock. It is the word 100%: the quantity math has to close, and a spreadsheet will happily record 400 kg in and 388 kg out without objecting. If your lot codes are not unique enough to survive a trace, start with [what a traceability lot code has to be](/blog/what-is-a-traceability-lot-code), then run [the 24-hour traceback drill](/blog/mock-24-hour-traceback) against a two-hour clock.

## 7. Findings: the 14 that end your audit, and the low score that does not

Two systems run in parallel, and confusing them is why producers misjudge their risk. The Addendum does **not** use minor, major and critical grading, only the 0 to 5 scale. A wall of 3s is a bad Addendum and a corrective action plan. It is not, by itself, a failed audit.

"Critical finding" is a **separate published list of 14 conditions**, any one of which is a failed audit regardless of score:

1. Observed contamination of raw materials, finished product or Zone 1
2. No documented corrective action when critical limits were missed
3. Falsification of records
4. Infectious illness or open wounds near exposed product
5. Allergens present with no allergen control program
6. No documented SSOP
7. No documented food safety or HACCP plan
8. Regulatory requirements not met
9. No written interior and exterior pest program
10. Non-potable water
11. Untested water
12. **Finished products not properly coded for traceability**
13. Decomposed pests, including pests in traps
14. No foreign material detection device by the anniversary audit without an exemption

Plus the records condition from section 4: fewer than 60 days of operational records preceding the audit. Number 14 also changed in V3.0, where the mandatory x-ray requirement was dropped, so a metal detector or equivalent can satisfy it.

Number 12 is the one this site exists for. **Coding failures are not a scored deduction on the Addendum. They sit on the same list as falsified records and non-potable water.** A producer who is confident about food safety and casual about lot codes has the risk backwards.

Separately, and USA only: failure to produce your **Costco FSVP approval letter** when requested "will receive an automatic failure for their audit regardless of the certification outcome." A document in a folder, deciding an audit outcome on its own.

## 8. The 14-day corrective action clock

Two deadlines, both 14 calendar days, anchored to different events.

- **Addendum non-conformances:** corrective action plan posted to the Costco audit database within **14 calendar days**.
- **Any audit scoring under 98%:** plan uploaded within **14 calendar days of the audit being posted**.

The first runs from the audit, the second from posting, which is not a date you control. Wait for a posting notification and you have already spent the first clock.

Every plan needs five fields, and Costco names all five: the **employee or employees responsible**, a **root cause analysis**, the **corrective action**, a **preventive plan**, and a **completion date**. Root cause is where thin plans get rejected. "Operator retrained" is a corrective action wearing a root cause costume.

The approval path surprises people: **the auditor who conducted your audit approves the plan**, not Costco. The form carries auditor approval, approval date, and a status of Approved, In Process or Rejected. Costco reviews after the CB uploads. You are writing for the person who stood in your plant, and they know which answers were thin.

Then the rule that makes it compound:

> "If findings from the previous audit are not corrected by the time of the anniversary audit, each repeat non-conformance will be awarded a score of '0' points."

Not a deduction. Not the element matrix. A hard zero. A 4 you did not fix becomes a 0 next year, and on a 65-point form two of those move you a long way.

## 9. What a failure actually costs

A failed audit is one scoring below Costco's expectations **or** containing any critical finding. What follows is published, and it is short.

**Within 24 hours**, both the CB and the supplier must notify Costco of a failed audit. Suppliers must also notify immediately if a certification is suspended, canceled or withdrawn. Bribery, corruption, deception or falsification is reported to Costco Wholesale and "may result in the termination of the business relationship."

**Within 60 days** of the initial audit date, an **unannounced** Costco Food Safety/GMP re-audit. For growers, harvest crews and greenhouses the window is 30 days, or within the first 30 days of the next season. Every corrective action from the original audit is verified during the re-audit. **The vendor pays for it.**

On orders, the published consequence is one sentence: Costco "may suspend orders after an audit failure until a re-audit can occur," and this "will be handled on a case by case basis."

That is the whole published consequence. There is **no published deactivation process, no supplier scorecard, and no strike count**. Anyone quoting a number of failures that triggers deactivation is quoting something Costco has not published. What Costco does say is that buying staff "will use audit information to guide purchasing decisions," discretionary by design.

One more thing Costco does not hand you: audit documents in its database are **visible only to Costco personnel**. Request your report from whoever paid for the audit, or from your CB under a data-sharing agreement.

## What is still open

**SQF Edition 10** was released March 1, 2026, is effective no earlier than January 1, 2027, and audits are anticipated no earlier than January 2, 2027 pending GFSI benchmarking. Audited during 2026, **Edition 9 applies**. Edition 10 brings a revised weighted core-clause scoring model, so Costco's "86 or above" was written against Edition 9 arithmetic, and Costco has not published how it will map. Open question, not a prediction.

**V3.0 is current as of September 2026.** There is no V4.0, and Addendum V3.0 (2025) is the current form. If someone quotes you a newer version number, ask for the document.

## Where to put your prep hours

Rank by what ends an audit, not by what dents a score. Sixty continuous days of operational records and correct lot coding on finished product are both critical findings, and in the USA the FSVP approval letter is an automatic failure on its own. Close last year's findings next, because repeats score a hard 0. Rehearse three trace exercises rather than two, so the live one can be retired. Everything else on the Addendum still earns partial credit. For the wider program around the audit, the [Costco supplier traceability map](/blog/costco-supplier-traceability-requirements) covers the layers underneath, and [the KDE checklist](/blog/fsma-204-kde-checklist) covers what to capture at each event so the coding holds up.

Most of what fails on audit day is a records problem, not a food safety problem. That is the job [FSMA204Hub](/) does: supplier lots captured at receiving, linked into the batches that consumed them, linked forward to what shipped, so a trace closes as a query rather than an afternoon with a timer running. If an audit is on your calendar, [the free readiness score](/score) covers the same ground in two minutes, and [the 14-day trial](/sign-up) needs no credit card.

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*Written by [Anas Marwan](/authors/anas-n), Co-founder of Darza Technologies. Sources: Costco Global Food Safety Audit Expectations V3.0 and Costco Addendum V3.0 (2025), as published through Azzule Systems. Last reviewed 2026-09-09.*

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Source: https://fsma204hub.com/blog/costco-food-safety-audit (https://fsma204hub.com)