IFS FEATURED STANDARD: IFS Broker Certification Overview

• The customer has submitted to voluntary assessment (audit) according to defined criteria (certification standard).
• A certificate is only issued if the assessment (audit) does not reveal any major nonconformities with the requirements of the certification standard.
• The certificates are valid for a restricted period of time. Interested parties can check the validity of individual certificates in the certificate database of TÜV SÜD Management Service GmbH.
• To maintain certificate validity, the certificate holder must annually complete an announced audit with a positive result.
• Unannounced audits are possible in specific cases.
• According to the standard owner’s requirements, communication of certification to IFS BROKER is restricted to B2B communication. Communication to consumers is not permitted.

Independent and qualified experts (auditors) apply the following auditing techniques:

• Document review:
  Review of documentation such as documented procedures, work instructions
  Inspection of recipes/formulations and specifications
  Evaluation of food labelling
  Specific traceability tests
  Evaluation of analysis results
  
  
• On-site audit
  Interviews with the employees of the organization
  e.g. department specific tasks such as Purchasing and Quality Management

Audits are always based on sampling. Given this, it is impossible to inspect every single product or every single production process. TÜV SÜD certification thus cannot give a 100% guarantee that all food products of a certified company are free from nonconformities or that the organisation meets the criteria of the standard at all times, even though this is one of the key objectives of the IFS BROKER standard.