Start with what the buyer is actually deciding
A certification question is rarely about certification. It is about whether a consignment will arrive as specified, and whether the file behind it will survive a customer audit. Certification is the cheapest available proxy for that, which is why buyers ask for it first and ask about price second. The material below is organised the way a purchasing file is organised rather than the way the standards are written.
The four schemes you will meet
BRCGS Food Safety and IFS Food are retailer-driven standards with prescriptive site requirements and a graded audit result. FSSC 22000 layers sector prerequisite programmes and additional requirements onto ISO 22000, and is the route most industrial processors take. All four rest on a Codex HACCP study, which is the part that has to be specific to your process rather than copied.
The practical differences are narrower than the marketing suggests. Where they matter is in audit style, in how non-conformities are graded and in which customers accept which certificate without argument. The side-by-side is in BRCGS vs IFS Food v8 and FSSC 22000 vs ISO 22000.
What a certificate proves, and where it stops
A certificate covers one legal entity, at one site address, for a defined scope of products and processes, as observed on one audit date. Every one of those five words is a place where a supply chain quietly falls out of scope: a second freezing line commissioned after the audit, a co-packer used at peak, a third-party cold store nobody listed, a product category never included, an expiry that passed while a renewal was pending.
Treat the certificate as an index to the file, not as the file. The audit report tells you where the site is weak; the certificate only tells you it passed.
Verification is a two-minute job
Every major scheme runs a public register. Search by certificate number, then match the legal entity, the site address, the scope, the audit date and the validity against the document you were sent. Record what you saw and when. That record is what your own customer will ask for when they audit your supplier approval process. The step-by-step is in how to verify a supplier’s certificate.
Organic sits on a different axis
Organic certification under Regulation (EU) 2018/848 is not a food safety scheme and does not replace one. It regulates the production process and the integrity of the chain, and it works through two separate documents: an operator certificate for the company and a certificate of inspection for each consignment. If you are buying organic, you need both tracks. See organic certification for EU import.
Building the approval file
The file a competent buyer assembles before the first order contains the certificate and its verification record, the audit report summary, the HACCP scope, a signed specification per article, residue and microbiological monitoring results, traceability and recall test evidence, and the insurance and legal entity documents. The supplier approval pack guide sets out the full list and what to do when a supplier cannot produce one of the items.
If you want that pack assembled for a specific product and origin, send us the specification and we will come back within one business day with what is available and what is missing.