As a quality assurance scheme, „QS. Quality scheme for food.“ defines and monitors strict production and marketing criteria along the entire supply chain for fresh food. Scheme owner and provider of the QS scheme is the QS Qualität und Sicherheit GmbH. Together with scheme participants, QS organises a reliable quality assurance – from farm to shop. Whether they are farmers, producers of fresh fruit, vegetables and potatoes, feed producers, butchers or food retailers. During their daily work, more than 140.000 QS scheme participants persue one common goal: consistent self-assessments as well as complete process and traceability assurance for meat and meat products, fruit, vegetables and potatoes. Within the QS scheme, they produce safe food in accordance with clearly defined quality requirements, supported by all upstream and downstream economic stages. In doing so, every participant can rely on the performance of others. Amongst others, the QS quality requirements concern livestock farming and feeding, the correct use of crop protection, the compliance with hygiene requirements and the cold chain as well as full traceability. For consumers, the blue QS certification mark is a clear signal for purchasing safe food from good hands. Today, the certification mark can be found in more than 23.000 food retail stores. QS, the alliance for certified quality assurance and safe food, consists of representatives from the agriculture, meat and feed industry as well as food retail. Shareholders of the QS Qualität und Sicherheit GmbH based in Bonn are: German Raiffeisen Association (Deutscher Raiffeisenverband e.V.), German Farmers' Association (Deutscher Bauern-verband e.V.), German Association of the Meat Industry (Verband der Fleischwirtschaft e.V.), Federal Association of the German Meat Industry (Bundesverband der Deutschen Fleischwarenindustrie e.V.) and Action Group for the Market Economy in German Retail-ing (Handelsvereinigung für Marktwirtschaft e.V.).
