Receiving and checking a delivery
Updated
Receiving is the only point where a problem is still somebody else's. After you sign, everything that arrived is yours, including what you did not check.
The four questions
Ask them at purchase, not at delivery, and expect the answers in writing with the lot.
Cleanliness. Certified to ASTA specifications, which are written to meet or exceed the FDA defect levels. Volatile oil. The graded quality measure, with a published minimum per spice. Treatment. Steam, irradiation or oxide, because it determines what you may claim. Origin and lot. Because a recall upstream is survivable only if you can say which of your jars it reached.
A supplier who answers all four is a different business from one who answers the price.
What to actually look at
Open the bag. Not every bag, but a bag, every time. Smell it against the last delivery of the same material, which means keeping a small sealed reference from a lot you were happy with.
Look for live insects, for damp or clumped material at the bottom of the sack, for color that is duller than you remember, and for anything that is obviously not the spice you ordered. Weigh one unit against the declared weight.
Five minutes, and it catches the things that are catastrophic later.
Recording the lot
Date received, supplier, their lot number, your lot number, quantity, and where the paperwork is filed. It is worth doing on the container itself as well as in the record, because the container is what somebody will be holding when the question arises.
This is the spine of any traceability you will ever need, and it is five fields.
When to reject
Live infestation, obvious damp, a smell that is wrong rather than merely weaker, or paperwork that does not match the delivery. Those are rejections, not conversations.
A weak lot that passes specification is a harder call and usually a supplier conversation rather than a refusal. But make it now. A weak lot accepted into stock becomes a weak product with your name on it, and by then the supplier has been paid.