International Food Standard
Today, IFS stands for the leading standard in the food industry when it comes to quality and food safety and imposes a specific set of requirements on controls and procedures for us as a company.
IFS stands for International Food Standard and was created by the food industry to impose requirements on its producers of raw materials and end products.
The most important question that was asked when drawing up this standard is: “Is a manufacturer able to market a food safe product in accordance with all applicable laws and specifications?”
This standard was developed by the German retail and further refined in consultation with the French wholesalers. The content is very similar to the BRC standard (British Retail Consortium), but there are still differences in the structure of the standard and the assessment method of the requirements during the audit. The IFS standard focuses not only on product safety but also on product quality.
To give you an idea of what this certificate actually means, it can be described in 5 main parts:
- Quality system management: description of HACCP system
- Responsibilities of management: description of how management is committed to high quality production.
- Resource management: description of how personnel are trained and monitored and provided with all the resources to work hygienically.
- Production: description of and requirements set for the entire site as well as requirements regarding specifications, traceability, pest control, cleaning and disinfection, transport, allergens, …
- Measurements, analyses, improvements: description of how to check and adjust the above points.