Date 2 December 2014, Brussels
The revised and extended version of European Guide to good practice for the industrial manufacturing of safe feed materials was endorsed by the European Commission and the EU Member States in the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed on the 20 November 2014.
The 2005 EU feed hygiene regulation encourages sector organisations to develop sector guides to good practice on hygiene and Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points, principles. The revised version of the Guide has been developed in a common process by the European starch industry (Starch Europe), the European vegetable oil and protein meal industry (FEDIOL) and the European Biodiesel Board (EBB). The new version of the documents can be found on the EFISC website.
The European Guide, developed for and by the industry, is based on EU and National legislation. It provides clear and transparent guidelines for the manufacturers of feed materials on management, Pre Requisite Programme, HACCP monitoring, traceability and incident management in combination with risk assessments by product and process. The Guide shows the starch, vegetable oil and protein meal and biodiesel industries’ strong commitment to strengthen the feed safety culture and further improve the level of feed safety for the feed and food chain on the European market. Other feed material producing sectors could build on the Guide and join the initiative.
The new version of the Guide is the result of the, day by day, work and learning process of the feed safety experts, striving for continuous improvement as well as the input from other stakeholders. Amongst others, requirements for the (operational) prerequisite programme and contaminant monitoring have been strengthened and the sector specific risk assessments have been updated. Furthermore the scope has been extended with feed materials coming from Biodiesel production. In addition a Salmonella factsheet and Salmonella auditor checklist have been introduced in order to provide guidance to the operator to further reduce and minimize a possible Salmonella contamination in protein meal. We would like to thank all stakeholders for their advice and input.
This European Guide serves as a basis for the European Feed Ingredients Safety Certification Scheme (EFISC). Requiring third party certification, the scheme is in line with international standards (ISO/IEC 17021 supplemented with ISO/TS 22003, food safety management system) and is also endorsed by the European Accreditation Body. So far, over 80 of the major production locations in 14 EU countries have been certified as being in compliance with the EFISC requirements. In addition to being a tool to improve feed safety, EFISC also works towards a single market for feed materials within the EU 28. It provides an EU wide harmonised system and offers uniform certification of the feed safety management systems. The mutual recognition with major national feed certification schemes in place is further contributing to the harmonisation.
