IFOS certified mark and fish oil quality
IFOS has strict rules on awarding the IFOS certified mark on a fish oil batch. However, you may be surprised to know that not all fish oil batches that carry the IFOS certification mark are necessarily verified and certified by IFOS.
International Fish Oil certification Mark gives increased level of confidence to consumers on the purity and quality of the fish oils. However, there are few scenarios where the certification does not necessarily mean best quality.
Manufacturers need to submit only 85% of the fish oil batches for verification
If a fish oil manufacturer want to use IFOS certification mark on their products, they must submit samples from atleast 85% of their batches, according to IFOS requirements. Also, they must submit their internal analysis reports to IFOS for the batches that are not submitted. While many companies submit 100% batches for verification, there are chances that some companies will not submit all batches. But companies can still use the IFOS certification Mark on all of their batches, including the few batches that are not tested by IFOS.
So, there is a possibility that you may receive a fish oil bottle that carry IFOS certified mark, but is not really verified by IFOS.
Manufacturers can start using the IFOS certified Mark on the products as soon as they submit it to IFOS for certification.
Sometimes, it may take some time for IFOS to certify a batch. In those instances, fish oil manufacturers can continue to use the IFOS certified mark on the product until the IFOS rating for that batch is published by IFOS.
So what happens if a specific batch from a fish oil manufacturer fails the certification process? The product may already be in market and some consumers may have already received them with the IFOS certified mark on it.
How to make sure the fish oils you get are superior quality and really certified?
The IFOS system leaves few holes in the certification system that can result in rare cases of wrong information to the consumers. These are practical limitations of any system and unfortunately there is no easy solution to this. It would have been better if IFOS publish the list of batches that fail the certification process so that consumers can confirm what they got is actually certified.
The best option for consumers is to buy IFOS certified fish oils from reputed brands that produce high quality products consistently.
Reference: http://www.ifosprogram.com/IFOS/FAQ.aspx