A certificate records the outcome of an audit or certification assessment against a particular standard, for the site or sites named and within the scope stated, at a particular point in time. What it evidences depends on the standard: BRCGS Food Safety and IFS Food audit product and process compliance, while ISO 22000 certifies a food safety management system. None is a batch test report or an import licence. Buyers who read certificates well do not ask “is the factory certified?” — they ask what the audit actually covered. This article sets out, for the three standards most often quoted in pet treat sourcing, what each one audits, whether pet food is inside its scope at all, and where the evidentiary value of a certificate ends.
BRCGS Global Standard Food Safety
BRCGS Food Safety is a product- and process-focused audit standard. Its requirements cover senior management commitment, a HACCP-based food safety plan, the food safety and quality management system, site standards and hygiene, product control (including traceability and supplier management), process control, and personnel. The outcome is expressed as a grade, which should be read exactly as issued on the certificate.
On scope, there is no need to guess. The published scope of Issue 9 expressly lists “pet foods for domestic animals and animal feed” among the products it covers, and the standard contains a dedicated section (5.8) that applies only to sites manufacturing, processing or packing pet food or animal feed. Pet food is not borrowed into this standard from human food — it is written into it.
When you verify a BRCGS certificate, check three things. First, the scope wording and product categories: do they cover the product you are buying, produced the way you are buying it? Second, the certificate holder and site address: are they the legal entity and the physical site that will make your order? Third, the audit and expiry dates: is the certificate current, and is it the latest issue? The standard also states its own boundary — it does not apply to wholesale, importation, distribution or storage activities outside the direct control of the company. A manufacturing certificate does not automatically cover independent wholesalers, importers, distributors or storage providers elsewhere in the supply chain.
IFS Food
IFS Food pursues a similar goal to BRCGS with a different audit logic. Its requirements are organised in five chapters — governance and commitment; the food safety and quality management system; resource management; operational processes; and measurements, analyses and improvements. Food defence is one requirement within the operational processes chapter (clause 4.21), not a separate top-level chapter. The audit outcome is calculated as a percentage score and determines whether the site achieves Foundation or Higher Level certification, subject to the applicable non-conformity rules. Scores and levels belong to IFS alone: they cannot be converted into, or compared line-by-line with, another scheme’s grade.
Pet food is likewise an explicit part of the IFS system. The IFS Food product scopes include a dedicated pet food scope (product scope 11), and IFS’s own product documentation lists pet food among the categories the standard covers. As with BRCGS, applicability is a matter of the scheme’s published scope — not of analogy with human food production.
Check both the product scope and the applicable technology scope against the product and processing steps involved. Also confirm that the certificate holder and the audited production site are the same legal entity and address, and that the certificate is in date. Where a supplier offers an IFS certificate for one scope and quotes you a product outside it, the certificate is not evidence for that product.
ISO 22000
ISO 22000 is different in kind. It is a management-system standard: it specifies requirements for a food safety management system (FSMS) for any organisation directly or indirectly involved in the food chain, built on HACCP principles, prerequisite programmes, and a structured management system. It sets the framework requirements; it does not prescribe product specifications.
Its coverage of pet food is definitional. ISO 22000:2018 distinguishes “food”, “feed” and “animal food” as separate defined terms: “animal food” covers products intended for consumption by non-food-producing animals, and pet food is the standard’s own example. A pet treat manufacturer therefore sits inside the food chain as ISO 22000 defines it. In practice, certification under ISO 22000 is issued for stated certification categories — so, again, the category and scope printed on the certificate tell you which part of the chain was actually audited. Under ISO 22003-1:2022, pet food processing may fall within different Category C subcategories depending on the product and process. Buyers should therefore check the applicable food-chain category and subcategory, rather than assuming that all pet food manufacturers share one certification category.
Two cautions follow. First, because ISO 22000 is a framework standard, two certificates with the same logo can rest on quite different operational depth; the scope statement and the certification body matter. Second, ISO 22000 certification is a statement about a management system. It is not, by itself, a market access approval for any destination.
What a certificate does not do
Whichever of the three standards is involved, three boundaries hold.
A certificate issued under any of these standards is not a product conformity certificate. It records that the audited site met the applicable requirements of the relevant standard for the stated scope at the time of assessment. It does not test or certify every batch shipped. Product-level evidence — specifications, agreed test items, certificates of analysis for the goods actually shipped — remains a separate, per-order matter.
A certificate issued under any of these standards is not a market access permit. Destination markets regulate pet food through their own instruments: establishment listing or registration, import eligibility rules, and consignment-level health certification. A factory can hold a valid BRCGS, IFS or ISO 22000 certificate and still not be eligible to ship a given product to a given market. The two tracks — voluntary system certification and regulatory access — must each be verified on their own evidence. Depending on the destination market and product, separate establishment approval, import eligibility and consignment-level health certification requirements may apply.
The certificate covers only the site, scope and period it identifies. The holder, the site, the product scope and the validity dates on the document bound its value. Products outside the scope, sites other than the one audited, and periods outside the validity window are simply not covered — and a lapsed, suspended, withdrawn or superseded certificate is not evidence of current certification.
Three questions before you rely on a certificate
Does the certified scope cover the product I am buying, made by the process I am buying?
Are the certificate holder and the audited site the same entity and place that will produce my order?
Is the certificate in date, and is it the latest version? Is the certification body appropriately accredited for the relevant scope?
If the certificate does not make these points clear, request the full certificate and scope schedule, then independently verify the certification body and its accreditation. Do not rely on the standard’s name alone.
HEYUAN PET is a Weifang-based pet treat export organizer. In our own document work, this is the order we check certificates in — scope, holder and site, validity, and certification-body accreditation — before any discussion of price, because an unverified or out-of-scope certificate cannot substantiate the certification claim being relied on for an order.