Information sharing between supply chain partners is considered essential, not only for improving the competitiveness and innovativeness of agribusiness firms but also food safety and traceability. Referring to this, quality assurance schemes are becoming increasingly popular in the food industry and agricultural sector. With the support of different stakeholders numerous schemes were developed guaranteeing quality and processing standards. With this trend in mind and due to the lack of research, this paper presents an overview over certification schemes in the food industry, their characteristics and scopes. Furthermore, we analyze the state of the art of certification schemes in the European agrifood sector, determine which quality-related information is exchanged according to these schemes and examine the consequences for chain-wide communication. The paper presents initial results of a research project on IT-supported agrifood chains for improved traceability of meat products (IT FoodTrace) financed by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (code: 0330761).