What Is GMP+ FSA?

Origins of the standard

The GMP+ system originates in the Dutch feed sector, where as early as the 1990s the industry began developing its own good manufacturing practice (Good Manufacturing Practice) rules for feed, in response to growing market expectations and successive food and feed safety crises in Europe. Over time, the national Dutch system evolved into an international standard managed by the independent organisation GMP+ International, which today publishes normative documents, oversees certification bodies, and maintains a public register of certified companies.

A key premise of GMP+ was to create a system that covers not just the production facility itself, but the entire supply chain — from raw material, through production and trade, to transport to the end customer. This "from field to animal" approach sets GMP+ apart from many earlier, narrower quality systems and explains why it is today one of the most frequently required feed standards in European trade.

The impulse to develop a systemic approach to feed safety in Europe came from high-profile crises at the turn of the 1990s and 2000s — including the 1999 dioxin contamination episode in Belgian feed, and earlier experience with BSE in cattle. Both cases showed that contamination can enter the food chain at the raw-material or compound-feed stage, with its effects only becoming apparent much later, in farm animals and in products of animal origin reaching the consumer. In response, the European Union introduced harmonised feed hygiene legislation (including Regulation (EC) 183/2005), while the industry — alongside these legal requirements — began developing its own, more detailed and more frequently audited quality management systems, of which GMP+ became one of the most widely recognised in Europe.

It is worth stressing that GMP+ does not replace applicable feed law — it operates alongside it, as an additional, voluntary layer of requirements, usually more detailed and more often verified in practice than the minimum level of official oversight. A company implementing GMP+ must still meet all the requirements of national and EU feed law — the certificate is an additional requirement set by the market, not a substitute for statutory obligations. We write more about how the standard's requirements relate to legislation on the Feed law regulations page.

Two pillars of the system: GMP+ FC and GMP+ FRA

The GMP+ International system consists of two related elements. The first is GMP+ FC (Feed Certification scheme) — the actual certification scheme, under which a company implements the standard's requirements and undergoes an audit by an independent certification body. This is the element most companies mean when they simply say "GMP+ certificate".

The second pillar is GMP+ FRA (Feed Responsibility Assurance) — a set of tools and knowledge bases supporting the assessment of risk from undesirable substances in feed, as well as responsibility and sustainability aspects across the feed chain, including an Early Warning System used by participants to exchange information about detected contamination or irregularities at suppliers.

In practice, this means that a company implementing GMP+ FC also draws on GMP+ FRA resources — for example when assessing whether a given feed material or supplier carries elevated risk and requires additional testing or more frequent checks. Participation in the Early Warning System works in both directions: a company receives notifications about hazards identified at other participants (for example, a batch of raw material withdrawn because it exceeded the permitted mycotoxin level), but is itself also obliged to report serious irregularities it detects in its own supply chain. This mutual-warning mechanism is one of the features that sets GMP+ apart from standards that stop at a single company's internal quality control.

From the perspective of a company implementing the standard for the first time, the FRA pillar tends to be less visible than the FC requirements themselves — it focuses on supporting tools rather than direct audit checkpoints. Even so, its role grows as a company's quality management system matures: the better a business uses the available risk knowledge bases, the more accurately it can qualify suppliers and raw materials before they even enter the production chain, which reduces the number of incidents only caught at incoming inspection or — in the worst case — by the customer.

Scope of GMP+ certification

GMP+ is not a single, uniform certificate for every company — the scope of implementation depends on what a given business actually does within the feed chain. Before starting implementation, the certification body or advisor should help the company precisely define the certification scope — that is, pin down exactly which processes, locations and types of activity the audit will cover. A poorly defined scope is one of the more common sources of misunderstanding at the start of a project: a company might, for instance, implement the requirements for production while overlooking an external warehouse it actually uses to distribute finished compound feed, which later complicates the certification audit. In practice, several main areas of application of the standard can be distinguished:

• Production of feed materials, compound feed and additives — requirements for facilities manufacturing feed and its ingredients, covering control of the production process, hygiene, and management of raw materials and finished product. We cover this in more detail on the GMP+ for production page.
• Trade and storage — requirements for trading companies and warehouses dealing in and storing feed materials, including control of product origin and storage conditions. More on the GMP+ for trade and storage page.
• Transport and forwarding — requirements for hauliers and forwarding companies handling feed loads, including load history, washing procedures and transport documentation. Details on the GMP+ for transport page.
• Laboratories and related services — for entities carrying out analyses for the feed chain, with separate requirements covering testing methods and result quality.

A company can implement one of these scopes, or several at once — a common case is a compound feed producer that also runs its own transport, and includes both areas of activity within its certification.

What the standard's requirements consist of

Regardless of the specific area of activity, GMP+ requirements are built on a few recurring thematic blocks that the auditor checks in every certified company, in proportion to the scale and nature of its activity. The first is a documented quality management system — a set of procedures describing how the company actually works, not merely declaring that it works according to certain principles. The second block is hazard analysis and critical control points (HACCP), adapted to the specifics of feed production, trade or transport. The third is traceability — a company's ability to trace the path of every batch of raw material or product, both backward (to the supplier) and forward (to the customer). The fourth block covers supplier management and raw-material qualification, and the fifth covers handling non-conformities, incidents and any product withdrawal from the market. A full, detailed description of each of these elements is available on the GMP+ requirements page.

The scope and level of detail of the documentation required from a given company depends on where in the feed chain it operates. A compound feed producer that processes raw materials itself must document considerably more control points in the production process than a company that only stores finished products. A haulier, in turn, focuses mainly on the load history of its vehicles and on washing procedures between transporting different goods, which limit the risk of cross-contamination.

Who should consider implementing GMP+

The decision to implement GMP+ most often stems from market requirements rather than legislation. It is worth considering certification if your company:

• sells or plans to sell feed or feed materials to customers in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium or other Western European countries, where GMP+ is a market standard,
• works with large feed groups or animal producers that require certification from their suppliers as a condition of doing business,
• wants to reduce the number of separate audits carried out by different customers — a certificate recognised by many customers replaces some individual supplier audits,
• exports products of animal origin (meat, milk, eggs) to markets where documented feed safety in the production chain matters to the customer.

It is also worth considering implementing the standard proactively, before it becomes a formal condition of a specific transaction. Companies that wait to certify until a business partner sets a hard condition of "certificate or the relationship ends" usually have less time to calmly prepare documentation and roll out procedures, which increases time pressure on the initial audit and the risk of non-conformities on the first attempt.

Benefits of implementing the standard

Beyond access to markets that require the certificate, implementing GMP+ brings order to a company's internal processes: it enforces systematic quality control of raw materials and finished products, makes traceability easier in the event of a complaint or incident, and builds a documented compliance history that can be shown to new business partners without having to undergo a separate supplier audit for each of them.

In practice, the benefits of implementing GMP+ fall into two groups. The first is external, commercial benefits — access to customers who require the certificate, fewer individual audits ordered by particular business partners, and easier entry into Western European markets, where GMP+ is a common requirement rather than an exception. The second group is internal, organisational benefits: a well-ordered flow of documents, clearly assigned responsibility for individual elements of the quality system, less dependence on the knowledge of individual "key" employees, and — over the longer term — fewer costly quality incidents, because the system forces deviations to be caught before they grow into a serious problem.

The reputational aspect also matters: a GMP+ certificate in the GMP+ International register is publicly verifiable, which lets potential business partners check a company's certification status themselves before the first business contact — without having to ask for a scanned copy of the document or rely solely on a seller's assurances.

Common mistakes when implementing the standard

Experience from companies implementing quality management systems in the feed industry shows that most difficulties on a first attempt at GMP+ are not about technical knowledge, but about how the implementation is organised. The most common mistake is treating certification as a one-off project done "for the audit" rather than a lasting change in how the company works — documentation prepared solely for the time of the inspection, without the procedures it describes actually being implemented, usually becomes outdated quickly and reveals discrepancies already at the first surveillance audit.

Another frequent problem is underestimating the role of traceability — companies focus on the quality of the product itself while neglecting the ability to quickly trace a batch of raw material or product in both directions along the supply chain. In audit practice, it is exactly the traceability test (a so-called mock recall, a simulated batch withdrawal) that tends to be the moment when gaps invisible in an earlier self-assessment come to light. A third typical mistake is too narrow a team involvement — if responsibility for implementing the standard rests with a single person alone (for example, a quality representative), without genuine engagement from purchasing, production and logistics, part of the requirements remain on paper only, rather than in everyday operational practice.

Where to start

Implementing GMP+ usually begins with an assessment of the current state — checking which elements of a quality management system already function within the company (for example an existing HACCP plan, warehouse procedures) and what needs to be added. We describe the following steps, along with an indicative timeline and how the certification audit unfolds, on the GMP+ certification process page. A detailed breakdown of the standard's documentation and procedural requirements is available on the GMP+ requirements page.

In advisory practice, a good starting point is a short conversation in which we discuss the company's actual scope of activity, its current and planned customers, and whether GMP+ alone is the right fit or — given the customer profile — it is worth considering a parallel implementation of, for example, FAMI-QS from the outset. This initial diagnosis helps avoid a company implementing a broader scope of requirements than it actually needs, which unnecessarily extends the project and raises its cost, or the opposite — implementing too narrow a scope, which then has to be extended after the first certification audit.

GMP+ and other feed and quality standards

Companies operating in the feed chain encounter not only GMP+ but also other standards with a similar goal — feed safety and traceability. The most commonly compared system is FAMI-QS, a standard dedicated primarily to producers of feed additives and premixes — in many areas (quality management system, HACCP, traceability) the requirements of both standards are similar, which allows companies certified under one system to prepare relatively efficiently for the other. Another standard present on the European market is EFISC-GTP, focused mainly on trade and production of plant-based raw materials for the feed chain, and the German QS system, deeply rooted in the German market and covering the entire chain — from farm production to retail sale.

It is worth distinguishing GMP+ from general, "horizontal" quality management standards such as ISO 9001 or ISO 22000. The latter define general frameworks for a quality management or food safety system, whereas GMP+ is a sector-specific standard "tailored" to the specifics of the feed chain — with concrete, detailed requirements covering, for example, monitoring of contaminants typical of feed (mycotoxins, dioxins, heavy metals) or washing procedures for transport vehicles between loads of different goods. Some companies choose to implement GMP+ as a complement to an ISO 9001 system they already hold, using the existing documentation structure as a starting point rather than building a quality system from scratch.

How to check a company's certificate status in the register

One of the practical advantages of the GMP+ system is the transparency of information about certified companies. GMP+ International maintains a publicly accessible register where you can check whether a given business partner actually holds a valid certificate, what its scope is (for example production, trade or transport), and when the certificate expires. For companies buying raw materials or transport services from external suppliers, this is a quick way to verify commercial claims without having to ask for a scanned copy of the document, which — in the event of a dispute — is harder to verify for currency.

It is also worth remembering that a certificate is not a static document — its scope and status can change during the certification cycle, for example following suspension after a serious non-conformity found during a surveillance audit. That is why, for long-term commercial contracts, good practice is to check the certificate status of key suppliers periodically rather than just once, especially those supplying raw materials with elevated quality risk.

The first year after certification

Obtaining a GMP+ certificate does not end the relationship with the certification body — it is the start of a cycle of regular oversight. In the first year after certification, a company already operates fully within the standard's regime: it keeps ongoing records in line with the procedures it has implemented, updates its supplier and raw-material registers, monitors any Early Warning System notices relevant to its raw materials, and, when the first real incidents occur (for example a customer complaint), triggers the documented non-conformity management procedure rather than ad hoc action. This is precisely the period in which it becomes clear whether the documentation prepared for the certification audit actually translated into a change in day-to-day work, or remained a formality.

It is worth planning an internal review of the system during this time too — even an informal one — checking whether all records, registers and procedures are actually being kept as described, before the auditor does so at the surveillance audit. Such internal "pre-audits" significantly reduce the risk of non-conformities at subsequent visits from the certification body and help catch deviations before they become a more serious quality problem.

Glossary of terms

GMP+ International

An independent organisation based in the Netherlands that manages the GMP+ standard, publishes normative documents, and maintains a register of certified companies and accredited certification bodies.

GMP+ FC (Feed Certification scheme)

The part of the GMP+ system covering implementation of the requirements and certification of a company by an independent certification body — this is the element commonly referred to as the "GMP+ certificate".

GMP+ FRA (Feed Responsibility Assurance)

A set of tools and knowledge bases from GMP+ International supporting the assessment of risk from substances in feed, as well as responsibility and sustainability issues across the feed chain.

Certification body

An independent auditing firm accredited by GMP+ International, authorised to carry out certification audits and issue GMP+ certificates.

Early Warning System

GMP+ International's early-warning system, under which participants exchange information about detected contamination or irregularities at suppliers.

Surveillance audit

A periodic (usually annual) check carried out by the certification body during the certification cycle, verifying that the company continues to meet the standard's requirements.

Regulation (EC) 183/2005

An EU legal act laying down requirements for feed hygiene, applicable independently of voluntary GMP+ certification — the standard supplements, rather than replaces, this Regulation's requirements.

Certification scope

A precise definition of the processes, locations and types of activity covered by a given GMP+ certificate — agreed together with the certification body before the certification audit.