QS. Your Quality Scheme for Food

• The customer has submitted to voluntary assessment (audit) in accordance with defined criteria (certification standard).
• A certificate and/or the authorisation to use the certification mark are only issued if the assessment (audit) shows that all MUST criteria have been fulfilled and does not reveal any other major non-conformities with the requirements of the relevant standard.
• Certificates and/or certification marks are valid for a limited period of time (depending on the audit result). The validity of individual certificates can be checked in the certificate databases of TÜV SÜD Management Service GmbH or the database of the standard owner.
  Certification for the purpose of maintenance of approval is carried out at the following intervals:

• Unannounced audits are carried out in the following sectors:

• Feed, farming, slaughtering/deboning, processing, food retail and meat wholesale and in the area of wholesale and preparation/processing of fruit, vegetables and potatoes.
• Unannounced audits are performed between two announced regular audits, or the regular audits as such are carried out as unannounced audits.
• Unannounced audits by the standard owner, the accreditation body and the certification organisation for a specific reason are possible at any time.

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

• Document review:

• Evaluation of the organisation’s provisions and/or documentation to ensure systematic control of all processes relevant for food safety.
• Auditing of the food safety management system

• On-site inspection of the premises

• Review of operational, personal and process hygiene
• Assessment of the suitability of packaging materials and machinery
• Assessment of product labelling (e.g. allergens, correctness, scope)
• Review of qualification, training status and employee expertise
• Evaluation of crisis management including complaints and recall processes
• Guarantees of origin, plausibility checks, separation of the flow of goods
• Compliance with product-specific requirements
• The objective of the test is to uncover non-conformities with the requirements and systematic non-conformities in quality assurance.

Audits and analyses are always based on sampling. Given this, it is impossible to inspect every single product or every single step of production. TÜV SÜD certification thus cannot give a 100% guarantee that all products of a certified company are free from non-conformities or that the organisation meets the criteria of the standard at all times, even though this is one of the key objectives of the “QS. Your quality scheme for food“ standard.