IFS FEATURED STANDARD: IFS FOOD Certification Overview

• The customer has submitted to voluntary assessment (audit) according to defined criteria (certification standard).
• A certificate and/or the authorisation to use a certification mark is only issued if the assessment (audit) does not reveal any major nonconformities with the requirements of the certification standard.
• The certificates and/or certification marks 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 FOOD 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
  On-site inspection of all areas of the organisation
  Assessment along an audit path, from incoming goods inspection to outgoing goods and along critical control points
  Checking the routes of employees and goods
  Interviews with the employees of the organization
  Comparison of documentation with the actual processes

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 FOOD standard.