IFS Launches Integrity Program

February 9, 2011

Berlin, Germany/St. Louis, USA -- International Featured Standards (IFS) has developed and globally launched an innovative new Integrity Program in order to maintain the integrity of the IFS Standards. Well in advance of the Global Food Safety Initiative version 6 requirement for an integrity program for all schemes, IFS has taken the initiative to develop and implement the program.

The key points of the IFS Integrity Program include additional oversight of Certification Body management of the IFS Standards and the review and analysis of customer or retailer complaints -- including review audits.

IFS has hired Dr. Helga Hippe as Director, IFS Integrity Program. Dr. Hippe will manage the program from the main IFS office in Berlin, Germany.

“We have already trained Integrity Auditors in several countries and have implemented the Integrity Program globally. The process is working as we have identified several points within Certification Bodies that are now in the process of being improved,” says Dr. Hippe. “Certification bodies have withdrawn two certificates since IFS began performing its own Integrity Audits. In both cases the process of removing the certificate from the supplier was initiated based on retailer complaints. Also in both cases the IFS Integrity auditor found the company didn’t meet the Standard requirements as the original audit suggested. Furthermore, based on retailer complaints or our own investigations, several cases have been forwarded to our sanction committee. For some cases the sanction committee has already determined a breach of the IFS scheme rules for the respective certification body and/or the auditor. These sanctions have led to the implementation of additional training and corrective actions.”

The proactive step in launching an innovative Integrity Program should give retailers and other manufacturers – those with suppliers who are IFS certified – strong confidence in the integrity of the IFS standard and of the products they purchase from those IFS-certified companies.

Inquiries about the IFS Integrity Program or IFS in general should be directed at the current time to either: George Gansner (St. Louis, MO USA) at Gansner@ifs-certification.com, (+01) 314.686.4610, or Nina Lehmann (Berlin, Germany),Lehmann@ifs-certification.com, (+011) 49.30.726.250.95.

About IFS: International Featured Standards (IFS) is an umbrella brand for globally recognized standards in Food, Logistics, Cash & Carry/Wholesale, Broker, and Household and Personal Care (HPC) and was originally developed by the associated members of the German retail federation – Hauptverband des Deutschen Einzelhandels (HDE) – and of its French counterpart – Fédération des Entreprises du Commerce et de la Distribution (FCD), along with input from retailers in Italy, Switzerland, Poland, Spain, and Austria.

IFS Food is a global uniform quality assurance and food safety Standard accepted under the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI). The Standard, which is used worldwide, is intended to allow the assessment of suppliers’ food safety and quality systems in accordance with a uniform approach and applies to all post-farm gate stages of food processing. More than 12,000 IFS audits were conducted globally in 2010. More information about IFS can be found at www.ifs-certification.com.

Follow IFS on Twitter: IFS_Food; on LinkedIn.com Group: IFS Food; and on Xing.com Group: IFS Food.

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Keywords: food safety standards

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