Line Clearance Record

Line clearance is the general gate that runs at every changeover. Where a changeover carries a specific allergen or label risk, this record hands off to the dedicated check rather than absorbing it.

BRCGS Food Safety Issue 9 does not prescribe a line clearance form. It requires the outcomes a clearance is built to deliver: allergen management, control of operations at changeover, labelling control, and a formal release decision, each of which an auditor will expect to see evidenced.

BRCGS is a private, GFSI-recognised certification scheme, not law. What sits underneath a line clearance record in every jurisdiction is the statutory duty to declare allergens correctly, which is the risk clearance exists to control.

The template prompts for every physical check a clearance needs. It does not prompt for the judgement calls that decide whether the completed record actually means the line is clear.

Line clearance findings rarely concern whether the form was completed. They concern whether the pass decision was earned by the checks recorded above it.

A bakery line ran a peanut-containing filled biscuit, then changed to a plain biscuit for the same customer's own-label range forty minutes later. The line lead completed the clearance alone, ticking product, packaging, cleaning and detection reset within two minutes, signing as both first and second checker using a second login kept at the panel for exactly this purpose.

Production ran three hours before a complaint of an unexpected nut smell reached the site. The investigation found peanut filling residue packed into the corner of a hopper that had not been physically opened, only wiped at the visible front edge. The detection system had also not been reset with a test piece for the plain biscuit, so it ran on a threshold calibrated for the previous, denser product.

The clearance record showed a full pass. What it did not show, because nothing on the form asked for it, was that one person had completed both check and countersignature in under three minutes, on a hopper needing physical opening. The fix was not a longer checklist; it was requiring the second checker's login to be a different, named person with their own timestamp, and photographic evidence for concealed areas on any allergen-declared changeover.

The clearance itself is a five-minute walk. What actually determines whether it means anything is whether the second check was truly independent, whether the linked allergen and label records were triggered, and whether a late finding reached a corrective action.

KnowOps

Holds the clearance register against the changeover schedule, and blocks the next production order until a clearance for the current line shows Passed.

KnowQuality

Links the allergen changeover check and label verification records automatically whenever the allergen or label flags are Yes, instead of leaving the link to be entered manually.

KnowTrain

Tracks which line leads are qualified to act as an independent second checker, and flags a clearance where the second signature belongs to someone not yet signed off.

Ella

Watches for clearances completed unusually fast or with a high N/A rate, and raises them for review before the pattern becomes an incident.

Line clearance

The verification that a line is free of the previous product, its packaging, labels and paperwork before the next product is introduced.

Changeover

The physical work of switching a line from one product to another, timed from last good piece of the old run to first good piece of the new.

Allergen cross-contact

Unintended transfer of an allergen from a previous product or its residue to a subsequent product that does not declare it.

Positive release

A formal decision that a line, or a batch, may proceed only once specified checks are confirmed complete, rather than by default.

Reconciliation

Confirming that the quantity of packaging or material removed matches what was issued, so nothing is unaccounted for.

Retained sample

A physical sample kept from a production run, used to trace back to that run if an issue is found later.

Foreign-body detection

Equipment, typically metal detection or X-ray, set to a sensitivity appropriate to the specific product currently running.

Independent second check

A verification carried out by a different, named person walking the same points as the first checker and reaching their own conclusion.