Effective safety precautions are essential for the production of highest-quality food. But long gone are the times when a business would decide on its own how to ensure safety for its products and facilities. Instead, companies have been confronted with a massive amount of new restrictions within the past years.
In the food processing industry, security breaches will almost certainly entail serious economical and legal consequences. In the worst case, a negatively affected product will be a hazard to the health of consumers. It is imperative for the management to face this big challenge by permanently guaranteeing the safety of all products and properties.
The International Featured Standards (IFS) are a number of different food, product and service standards along the entire supply chain of the food industry. This joint venture of German, French and Italian retailers aims to establish uniform guidelines to ensure transparency, comparability and high-quality products that comply with customer specifications. Today, the IFS comprise IFS Food, IFS Wholesale/Cash & Carry, IFS Logistics, IFS Broker, IFS HPC and IFS PACsecure. The IFS are monitored by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI).
As a protection against terrorist threats, food safety measures that go beyond legal requirements and precisely define the handling of visitors were made compulsory with the IFS V6. Among the particularly vulnerable targets are:
In order to obtain the IFS certificate, executives need to make
company safety the chief subject of all strategic considerations. The
only way to prevent theft, manipulation and the contamination of food is
to hinder trespassers and external personnel from entering the company
grounds and production sites.
There’s no way around an effective access control solution when setting up a food defense system that meets the IFS requirements. But since every food processing company is unique, choosing the best solution can quickly turn into a delicate task. The perfect system is process-driven and customized to a company’s individual size and needs. Only then will it maximize safety for products and properties while at the same time minimizing the administrative effort.
A streamlined access control system will significantly simplify visitor management and enable companies to score higher in the ISF system. And this will pay off: a study from 2009 came to the result that two-thirds of the interviewed companies managed to improve their operating income by up to 10% after obtaining the IFS certificate.
The IFS have become the foundation for many business relations within
the food industry: they are essential for a company’s success on the
b2b market. Entering the shelf of a German, French or Italian retailer
is almost impossible without this important certificate. Today, more
than 16,000 ISF certificates are issued every year. The new ISF Food V7
is expected to launch in spring 2018.