We would like to draw your attention to important requirements regarding food safety incidents, e.g. recalls and withdrawals, how you manage them and report and notify Certima BV about this.

For Food Safety Incidents including: product recall(s), product recall(s) and / or withdrawal(s) by official order concerning food safety and / or food fraud reasons or any visit from health authorities which resulted in notifications and / or penalties issued by authorities, Certima BV shall be informed within three (3) working days. Recalls on products out of the certified scope (exclusions) shall also be reported as the cause may have a relation with products in the certified scope.

In order to supply consistent information, certified customers need to fill out Certima Food safety incidents notification form for IFS and BRC

This form has to be completed and sent to Certima as soon as possible. Please acknowledge the specific deadlines for providing information as defined here and in the form. This form is to be used when an incident has happened that may affect product safety, quality or legality resulting in a food safety incident, for both IFS and BRC certified companies. Recalls of products out of the certified scope (exclusions) shall also be reported as the cause may have a relation with products in the certified scope.

Basic information (from section 1 to 17) shall be completed and submitted within, above mentioned, 3 working days after the incident announcement. The root cause analysis and corrective actions/preventive actions (from section 18 to 22) shall be provided within 5 calendar days from the date of the incident using the Editing function of the first notification form that you will submit and receive on your email.

Please provide information for every required field, supported with objective evidence from FSMS, otherwise the form will not be submitted. Objective evidences may be in form of email (written communication), traceability scanned records or screenshots, meeting minutes, training records, updated procedures, records of destroy/disposal of affected product etc. Objective evidences shall be sent on the email recall@certima.org.

An Incident manager at Certima will review the submitted information in the completed form and all additionally provided documents, and evaluate whether the incident has been managed in a satisfactory way and whether the certificate can be maintained. All information will be treated strictly confidential, but it will be reported to the scheme owners as per their protocols for reporting of food safety incidents. The information will be reported to the accreditation bodies upon request.

Excerpt of IFS & BRC requirements regarding Food Safety Incidents 07.07.2023