DEKRA advises certification in accordance with IFS Broker
Ensuring Safety in the Food Trade
Distributors have a key role in food safety. They are the link between producers and retailers and have the responsible task of ensuring and monitoring the transparency of the supply chain. Recent incidents involving contaminated foodstuffs reveal the need for action. Moreover, the Ukraine war has made it necessary to establish new supply chains in many areas of the food industry. DEKRA experts advise the food trade to go through an audit and obtain certification in accordance with the recognized IFS Broker standard in order to master the new challenges.
One basic problem in food safety is that analyses can only identify known substances. Given the lack of transparency in the many intermediate stages, additives that are unsuitable for consumption, false declarations, and contamination may go unrecognized.
IFS Broker (Version 3.1, 2021) is a helpful and internationally recognized standard for auditing and evaluating compliance with all statutory and customer-specific requirements (service compliance). It primarily addresses companies and individuals involved in trading with food and its ingredients: agents, trading agencies, brokers, and importers.
To ensure that brokers look more closely at their supply chains and are able to enforce quality requirements, the IFS Broker standard contains an extensive list of control points. The key areas are corporate responsibility, quality and product safety management systems, and resource management for the planning and service process.
The IFS Broker audit applies to legal persons and companies, irrespective of whether they are the owners of the products. Unlike in other systems, brokers do not necessarily take physical possession of the products in warehouses, packing stations, or transport vehicles, for example. The IFS Broker standard focuses on assessing how brokers select and manage the suppliers and service providers for the products required by customers.