Food Quality Magazine
ISSUE 01 | SUMMER 2014
Scope Exclusions: New Rules
in the IFS Food Standard Version 6
Miroslav Šuška, QUALIFOOD s.r.o.
According to IFS Doctrine, version
3 (April 2014), all food processes
managed by the company on the
same site shall be included in the
IFS Food audit scope.
As there were and always will be
many different situations and variations between food businesses,
there are also regular discussions,
when it is possible or not possible to exclude some products or
processes from the scope of the
IFS Food audit. Some reasons may
be logical and understandable, e.g.
certificate is required for only small
part of the production range of
the company and certification of
the whole site will bring expanses
to the company which wouldn`t
be covered due to new business
possibilities after the certification.
Sometimes - especially in the area
between primary agriculture and
food processing - it is rather difficult to decide, where the IFS certification should start. Examples
may be gelatine production or sugar refinery. Often, the final stage
of production is included in the
audit only. The scope shall then
clearly state, what was audited. For
example, “purification and packaging of pork gelatine“, “packaging
of sugar in retail paper bags, 15 to
25 kg paper/PE bags and big bags“
or “pressing of sugar into cubes,
production (mixing) and packaging
of flavoured sugar“ etc.
In some cases, food producers just
try to avoid higher costs through
requesting to certificate just smaller
part of the site. Such speculation
certainly is not acceptable.
As the standard owner, IFS certainly wants to ensure the IFS certification status is robust and a reliable guarantee for the certificate
users. Therefore, IFS has developed
a questionnaire that certification
bodies shall fill in, in order to determine if the exclusion from the
audit scope is possible. The questionnaire is available on IFS website
www.ifs-certification.com and can
be applied immediatelly after its
publication in April 2014, but it will
be mandatory for all certification
bodies from January 1st 2015 onwards.
The key in deciding, whether the
scope exclusion is possible, is that
only product-related exclusions
may be accepted.
IFS Food questionnaire
for certification bodies,
to define, under exceptional
circumstances, product
exclusions in audit scope
Version 1
10. 04. 2014
18
Another important requirement
is, the excluded product must be
clearly differentiable from the
products in scope. There are acceptable examples:
• Coffee grains in glass vs. plastic
containers
• Sliced cooked ham packed in 250g
packages vs. smoked ham (bacon)
in 500g packages
It is not possible to differentiate
the products within the scope and
excluded products, only by diffe-
rent label.
Other examples of clearly differentiable products are the following:
• Pet food in cans vs. pet food in
pouches
• Coffee grains vs. ground cofee
• Dried egg products vs. liquid egg
products
There are, however, a number of
other factors the certification body shall evaluate before approving
the exclusion from scope. Private
label products can`t be excluded
at all. There shall be no interaction
between the products which are in
the scope and excluded products
(e.g. microbial contamination,
allergen issue, etc.). Therefore, it is
not possible to decide on the scope
exclusion