Unannounced audits for IFS and BRCGS standards

For the IFS standards, every third audit must be an unannounced audit.

For BRCGS standards, an unannounced audit must be conducted once every three years.

For FSSC 22000, at least one unannounced surveillance audit must be conducted after initial certification and in each subsequent certification cycle.

For the standards IFS Food and IFS Logistic, unannounced audits must be carried out from 1.1.2021. For the BRCGS standards this obligation exists as of 01.02.2021. Exception is the BRCGS Storage & Distribution, where the requirement only becomes obligatory with version 4 as of 01.05.2021.

The audit scope corresponds to that of a regular audit.

The Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) is a private organisation founded in May 2000 under Belgian law by the international trade association, the Consumer Goods Forum. The GFSI maintains a system for benchmarking food safety standards for producers and standards for quality assurance on farms. Under the umbrella of the GFSI, eight major retailers (Carrefour, Tesco, ICA, Metro, Migros, Ahold, Wal-Mart and Delhaize) agreed in June 2007 on a common acceptance of the food safety programmes evaluated by the GFSI. More information can be found at https://mygfsi.com/

As a customer of TÜV NORD CERT you can decide to carry out an unannounced audit after your normal, planned audit has been carried out. There are two ways to do this:

1. On the one hand, you can inform your auditor directly after the audit that the next audit is to take place as an unannounced audit.
2. Secondly, you can send a message to the team assistant responsible for your company within 3 months of the last audit date.