The International Food Standard (IFS) as well as the British Retail Consortium (BRC) are international standards based on a shared assessment method for the qualification and selection of food product suppliers. The goal is to ensure compliance with food quality and safety requirements as well as compliance with the laws that regulate the sector.
The BRC and IFS quality standards allow companies to guarantee the quality and safety of the food products they sell and to control the quality level of their own brand products. Retailers who adopt a shared standard in assessing the quality of their suppliers reduce resources on third-party analyzes and have more effective supply chain management, reducing overall process costs and increasing the level of food safety for customers . Now considered a necessary requirement to operate in the sector, these standards are also an important tool for demonstrating the company's commitment to safety, quality and compliance with the rules governing the agri-food sector.
The requirements imposed by these standards refer to quality management systems, the HACCP methodology and a set of GMP (Good Manufacturing Practice), GLP (Good Laboratory Practice) and GHP (Good Hygiene Practice) requirements.
These standards allow companies to:
- communicate your commitment to food safety and, in the event of an accident, limit the possible legal consequences, demonstrating that you have advised all reasonable measures to avoid it;
- build and implement a management system to control full compliance with the constraints of quality, safety and compliance with the laws that regulate the sector, in particular those in force in the countries of destination of the finished products;
- have a tool to improve the management of food safety, through the control and monitoring of critical factors;
- reduce the incidence of waste, rework.
