Choose the scheme your customer names. If your volume goes to UK retail, to Ireland or to the Nordic chains, BRCGS Food Safety is the one that will be asked for; if it goes to German, Austrian, Swiss, French or Italian retail, IFS Food is. Neither scheme is technically superior, both are recognised by GFSI, and holding the wrong one is a commercial problem rather than a food safety one.
That is the whole answer, and everything below explains why it is the answer rather than a cop-out. The two standards were written by different retailer associations for the same purpose within a few years of each other, they have converged steadily, and the residual differences are in how they score you and who recognises the certificate rather than in what they ask you to do.
| Criterion | BRCGS Food Safety | IFS Food |
|---|---|---|
| Owner | BRCGS, a UK-based standards body, originally the British Retail Consortium | IFS Management GmbH, owned by the German and French retail federations |
| GFSI recognition | Yes | Yes |
| Grading output | Letter grades from AA down to D, split by announced and unannounced audit | Percentage score mapped to Foundation and Higher levels, with a star for unannounced |
| Audit frequency | Annual, with the interval shortened when the grade drops | Annual, with the interval shortened when the score drops |
| Unannounced option | Voluntary, and it upgrades the grade notation | Voluntary, and it adds a star to the certificate |
| Strongest geography | United Kingdom, Ireland, Nordics, and export chains that feed them | Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy, Poland and much of central Europe |
| Non-conformity model | Critical, major and minor, with critical or too many majors preventing certification at that audit | KO requirements scored separately, and a KO failure caps the outcome regardless of the rest |
| Typical audit duration | Two to three auditor-days for a single-site frozen fruit plant, driven by scope and product count | Comparable, and driven by the same variables |
| Cost driver | Auditor-days, travel, certification body fees and the annual BRCGS registration | The same structure, with the IFS database fee in place of the BRCGS one |
Two rows in that table do most of the work. The grading output row is what a buyer’s approval system reads, and the strongest geography row is what decides whether they read it at all.
When to choose BRCGS Food Safety
Choose BRCGS when the customer chain that carries your volume is British, Irish or Nordic, or when your product is going into a private label programme for a retailer in those markets. The standard was written for own-brand supply and it still shows: the product safety and quality management requirements are framed around a retailer’s liability for a product carrying its own name, and the clauses on product authenticity, labelling and claims are unusually detailed for that reason.
Choose it also when your buyers care about a legible grade. The BRCGS letter grade is the single most portable summary in the sector. A procurement analyst who has never read a food safety standard understands that AA is better than B, and approval systems are frequently built to accept a stated grade automatically and to escalate anything below it. That legibility is a genuine commercial asset when you are selling into a category manager rather than a technical manager.
Choose it when your site already runs a strong document control and internal audit function. BRCGS puts weight on the senior management commitment clause and on evidence that the system is reviewed and driven from the top, so a site with a real management review cycle is rewarded and a site where the quality manager carries the whole system alone is exposed.
Finally, choose it when you are building toward a chain that includes BRCGS at more than one link. Packers, storage and distribution operators and agents each have their own BRCGS standard, and a customer already running BRCGS across its supply base will find your certificate easier to slot into an existing framework.
When to choose IFS Food
Choose IFS Food when your volume goes to German-speaking retail, to France or to Italy. This is not a preference; it is close to a precondition. A German discounter’s supplier specification will name IFS by default, and a supplier holding only BRCGS will find itself explaining the equivalence at every stage of an approval that would otherwise be routine.
Choose it when you supply several European retail customers with different formats and you want one audit that most of them recognise without discussion. IFS has the broader continental footprint, and for a Ukrainian exporter whose demand base sits in Germany, Poland and France, the arithmetic usually favours it.
Choose it when your operation would benefit from a scoring model rather than a pass or fail on each clause. IFS assigns points per requirement, which means a partially implemented control still earns something and the certificate reflects the overall state of the system. Sites that are strong overall but weak in one area often score better under IFS than they grade under BRCGS. The reverse is also true: a site that is uniformly good but has one broken control can be hurt more by a BRCGS major than by the equivalent IFS deduction, unless that control happens to be a KO requirement, in which case IFS is the harsher of the two.
Choose it when the customer is doing its own second-party audit on top of the certificate. IFS reports are structured in a way that many continental retail technical teams read fluently, which shortens the follow-up conversation. The IFS Food record sets out the structure in more detail.
What changes in your process
Less than most people expect, which is the practical reason the choice is commercial rather than technical.
Both schemes require a HACCP system built on the Codex principles, a documented food safety management system, prerequisite programmes covering the site and its services, supplier approval and raw material controls, traceability with a mass balance exercise, and process and product control from intake to dispatch. A site that satisfies one is within reach of the other, and consultants routinely convert a site between the two in a single audit cycle.
The differences that reach the shop floor are these.
- Traceability drill timing. Both require a demonstrated trace; the expectation of how fast it is completed and how far it reaches upstream and downstream is set by the scheme and by the auditor’s read of your risk.
- Product decision trees. IFS asks for the scope to be defined by product technology group; BRCGS by product category. On a mixed site the scope statement can end up covering different things and it is worth drafting deliberately rather than copying.
- Corrective action language. BRCGS pushes hard on root cause for majors and will not close a non-conformity on evidence of correction alone. IFS scores the requirement, so a partial fix is visible in the score rather than open as a finding.
- Unannounced audits. Both offer them voluntarily, and in both cases the certificate shows it. Because buyers increasingly read the unannounced notation as a proxy for confidence, this has become a soft commercial requirement in some retail chains even though neither scheme makes it mandatory.
The one change that genuinely costs money is the audit window itself. An unannounced audit means the site has to be presentable and the records current on any working day within a defined period, which is a management discipline rather than an expense line, but it is the discipline most sites underestimate.
What the table does not show
Mutual recognition is not automatic. Both schemes are benchmarked against the GFSI Benchmarking Requirements, and GFSI recognition means the scheme has been assessed as meeting a common set of food safety outcomes. It does not oblige any buyer to accept any recognised scheme. A retailer is free to name one scheme in its supplier standard, and many do. The honest summary is that GFSI recognition makes your certificate arguable; the customer’s own policy makes it acceptable. What GFSI benchmarking is covers the mechanism.
The certification body matters as much as the scheme. Both standards are delivered by accredited third-party certification bodies, and the practical experience of an audit – how the auditor interprets a borderline clause, how quickly the report is issued, how a corrective action is closed – varies more between certification bodies than between the two standards. Check that the body is accredited for the scheme and for your product scope by a recognised accreditation body before signing.
The grade is a snapshot, not a warranty. An AA grade or a Higher level result describes one day, filtered through one auditor. It tells a buyer that a system exists and was working when it was looked at. It does not tell them what happens on a night shift in peak season, which is why serious buyers still run their own supplier approval process and their own intake checks on top of the certificate.
The cost is not mainly the audit fee. For a first certification, the visible cost is auditor-days plus certification body and registration fees. The invisible cost – documentation, training, internal audits, calibration, pest control contracts, closing the gap on prerequisite programmes and the management time to run all of it – is normally several times larger, and it is almost identical whichever scheme you choose. That is why converting between schemes is cheap and getting certified in the first place is not.
Timeline. As a working planning figure rather than a rule, a site with a functioning HACCP plan and reasonable prerequisites should think in months rather than weeks from decision to certificate: gap assessment, remediation, internal audit cycle, then the certification audit and the corrective action window before the certificate is issued. Sites starting from a bare legal minimum take substantially longer, and the variable is almost always the physical prerequisite work rather than the paperwork.
FAQ
Is BRCGS harder than IFS?
Neither is harder in the sense of asking more. They allocate failure differently. BRCGS uses a non-conformity model where a single critical or an accumulation of majors prevents certification at that audit; IFS uses a points score with KO requirements that cap the result. A site with one serious weakness and otherwise strong controls is usually hurt more by BRCGS unless the weakness is a KO under IFS, in which case IFS is the harsher. Across a normal population of sites the outcomes correlate closely.
Can we hold both?
Yes, and some sites do, usually because their customer base is genuinely split between UK and continental retail. It means two audits and two sets of fees, and the technical duplication is nearly total, so it is worth doing only when a real customer requirement on each side justifies it. The more common pattern is to hold one and to answer the other with the GFSI recognition argument plus the audit report.
Does the issue number matter?
Yes, and it changes. Both schemes revise their standards periodically, and each revision has a transition period during which audits move to the new issue. A specification should therefore reference the scheme and require the current issue in force at the audit date, rather than naming a number that will be superseded. Check the issue on the certificate against what the scheme owner currently publishes.
Which do Ukrainian suppliers usually hold?
Both are present in the Ukrainian frozen fruit and vegetable base, with the split tracking export destination rather than plant size. Suppliers oriented to continental EU retail more often hold IFS; those built around UK and Nordic programmes more often hold BRCGS. Ask for the certificate and check the scope statement covers the products and processes you are buying, because a certificate that excludes your product category is a common and easily missed problem.
What if a supplier holds neither?
Then the certificate is not doing the work and your own approval process has to. That is a legitimate position for a small or specialist supplier, but it means a site audit, a fuller document review and tighter intake testing, and it should be priced accordingly. It also means that if you sell onward into a retail chain, you will be carrying the certification expectation yourself. The food safety standards overview sets out what the alternatives cover.