GLOBAL – The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), and International Featured Standards (IFS), a globally active organization providing trusted standards and services to co-operate within the supply chain to improve product integrity, have announced that IFS has successfully achieved recognition against GFSI’s Benchmarking Requirements Version 2020.1.
The recognition includes IFS Food v7, IFS Broker v3.1, IFS Logistics v2.3 and IFS PACsecure v2 and is covering a very large part of the food supply chain.
IFS was founded in 2003 under the name International Food Standard. Since then the company, which records an annual growth of 10,9 percent, has expanded its range by six further standards and operates globally.
“We are very excited to have gained the recognition against the current GFSI Benchmarking Requirements for these four IFS Standards once again. IFS stands for demanding food safety certification at the highest level. The robust standard management, our integrity programme, and the requirements that IFS Auditors must fulfil contribute to the fact that all over the world, retailers, brand owners, authorities and other stakeholders know that they can trust IFS Certificates. It has been a very constructive process and we thank everyone who has contributed to it.”
He informed that since IFS drives the continuous improvement of the sites certified to an IFS Standard, they have to follow suite as an organization. He added that the GFSI benchmarking process gives IFS valuable indications to further improve its Standards.
Benchmarking is a procedure by which a food safety Certification Program Owner (CPO) is compared to the GFSI Benchmarking Requirements. The process is designed to be executed in an independent, unbiased, technically proficient and transparent manner.
A program is ‘recognized’ by GFSI when it has been verified that it meets every single GFSI benchmarking requirement, both in procedures and in operations. An independent benchmark leader, supported by the GFSI Technical Manager, assesses whether the application meets GFSI requirements, followed by a public consultation period that is open to all GFSI Stakeholders.
The benchmark leader and GFSI Technical Manager then make a recommendation to the GFSI Steering Committee regarding recognition of the programme.
“Working with IFS throughout this process has been a pleasure, and I congratulate them on gaining recognition against our GFSI Benchmarking Requirements. It’s important we continue to work together to help raise the food safety bar as new challenges and realities emerge.”
IFS aims to ensure comparability and transparency for the consumer throughout the entire supply chain, and to reduce costs for suppliers and retailers. To complement this, it offers supportive tools and guidance documents to support the work of quality managers, auditors, and certification bodies.
