IFS: The Day-to-Day

It's almost March, which means that it's coming up to our third annual IFS PACsecure audit! In case you missed our previous blog post (linked at the bottom of the post), IFS PACsecure is a certification program to reduce food safety risks related to packaging materials used directly or indirectly in the food supply chain. 

To give you a better idea of how this impacts every part of our company and your product, we wanted to share some examples of the measures we take to achieve this certification: 

• No physical hazards are allowed in food-safe areas onsite at any time. This includes food and drinks other than water.
• All jewelry must be removed when entering the warehouse and production floors, hands must be washed/sanitized, and hair/beard nets must be worn at all times. 
• Line clearance is mandatory at all stations: all materials must be removed from the work area before changing to the next job.
• All machinery is installed with cleaning in mind - there needs to be enough space around it to facilitate thorough cleaning.
• Only food-grade lubricants are used on machinery.
• All cleaning product ingredients have to be checked to ensure that there is no possibility of chemical contamination anywhere along the production process.
• There must be separated tools and cleaning equipment for production/warehouse to avoid contamination.
• All warehouses must have shatterproof lighting to prevent contamination from broken glass. An inventory is kept and checked frequently of all glass and hard plastic objects to ensure that everything is intact.
• All warehouse and production areas are secure with no openings to the outside. When it is deemed necessary to open a door in a food-safe area, all critical control points are assessed, and corrective actions are put in place ahead of time to eliminate the chances of contamination.

These are just a few of the things we do to keep on top of our IFS certification. We take pride in being able to guarantee this level of quality and assurance to all of our customers. 

Interested in finding out more about what this certification means or have a question about packaging? Contact us here or through our online request form.

IFS blog posts: IFS: The Details, Company Report Card, Certified Food Safe