Feed law regulations — the legal framework for feed safety in the EU and Poland

Two levels of requirements: mandatory law and voluntary certification

In the feed industry, two separate but related levels of requirements operate side by side. The first is statutory law — European Union regulations and their national implementation — which every feed business operator must satisfy by law, regardless of whether it has ever heard of quality certification. The second level is voluntary market certification schemes, such as GMP+, FAMI-QS or EFISC-GTP, which a company implements on its own initiative — most often because a customer, a trading partner or the company's own market strategy requires it.

This distinction can be confusing, because in practice both levels cover very similar areas — production hygiene, traceability, control of raw material quality. The difference lies in the nature of the requirements and how they are enforced: the law sets a minimum, universally binding safety threshold, verified by official supervisory authorities as part of their ordinary powers, while market certification typically imposes more detailed requirements, set out in a private standard and verified by an independent certification body in a regular audit cycle agreed with the company. Understanding this relationship matters for every company planning to implement certification — it helps avoid the mistaken belief that a certificate also "takes care of" legal obligations, and it makes it possible to plan consciously which elements of the quality system follow from statute and which are an additional layer required by the market.

General principles of EU food law

The foundation of EU food law, covering both food and feed, is Regulation (EC) No 178/2002, which lays down the general principles and requirements of food law, establishes the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and sets out procedures relating to food and feed safety. It is this act from which the principles that in practice run through the whole of feed law — and most requirements of voluntary certification schemes — derive.

The first of these principles is the responsibility of the business operator — it is the company placing feed on the market that is responsible for its safety, not the supervisory authority, which merely checks compliance with the regulations. The second is the principle of traceability — the obligation to ensure that, at every stage of production, processing and distribution, it is possible to establish who a given raw material or product came from and to whom it was passed on. The third is the obligation to withdraw from the market any product suspected of failing to meet safety requirements — together with the obligation to inform the competent authorities and, where necessary, customers. The fourth is the precautionary principle, which allows temporary risk-management measures to be taken in a situation of scientific uncertainty about a hazard, before full data confirming or ruling out the risk are available.

These four principles are not an abstract legal provision — in the day-to-day operation of a feed company they translate into concrete procedures: a system for recording suppliers and customers, a product withdrawal procedure, rules for acting in situations of uncertainty about the safety of a batch of raw material. It is worth stressing that these same principles — operator responsibility, traceability, withdrawal from the market, precaution — also form the conceptual foundation of most voluntary quality certification schemes in the feed sector, including GMP+, which is no coincidence but a deliberate reference to an already-existing legal framework.

Feed hygiene regulations

Alongside the general principles of food law there are regulations that specifically govern the hygiene of feed production, processing, storage and transport — in EU law this is Regulation (EC) No 183/2005 laying down requirements for feed hygiene. It requires feed business operators to carry out their activity under conditions that ensure product safety at every stage — from the selection and control of raw materials, through appropriate premises and production equipment, to the correct storage and transport of finished feed.

A key element of these regulations is the requirement for the operator to hold a documented system based on HACCP principles (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points) — that is, the systematic identification of hazards that may arise in the production process, the designation of points at which those hazards must be controlled, and the establishment of corrective actions in case acceptable limits are exceeded. This same approach — HACCP analysis as the foundation of a quality system — is one of the pillars of GMP+ requirements, which we describe in more detail on the GMP+ requirements page. The obligation to hold a HACCP-based system therefore follows directly from the law and applies to every feed business operator — with certain exemptions for very low-risk activities set out in the regulations — regardless of whether the company is considering voluntary certification at all.

Hygiene regulations also cover requirements for personnel — appropriate training for people carrying out tasks that affect feed safety — as well as requirements on pest control, waste management and preventing cross-contamination between different batches of feed produced. In audit practice, these are exactly the areas — HACCP system documentation, hygiene procedures and records demonstrating that they are applied — that are among the first elements checked both by the official supervisory authority and by a GMP+ certification auditor, although the scope and level of detail of this verification usually differ.

Placing feed on the market and its use

A separate block of regulations, including Regulation (EC) No 767/2009, governs the placing of feed on the market and its use — covering, among other things, labelling requirements, the declared composition of a product, permitted tolerances between the declared and actual value, and the list of substances whose use in feed is banned or restricted. The feed label serves a dual function here — on one hand it carries the information a customer needs for the safe and correct use of the product, and on the other it is a formal commitment by the producer as to the declared composition, which is subject to control.

Detailed requirements on what must, and what may, appear on a feed label — the list of ingredients, analytical constituents, information on feed additives or shelf life — are described separately on the Feed labelling page. It is worth stressing that incorrect or incomplete labelling is one of the more frequently identified non-conformities in both official inspections and certification audits — even though it may appear to be a purely formal area, in practice it has a direct bearing on the safety of the product's use by the customer, particularly for feed containing additives with restrictions on the target animal species or the period of use.

These regulations also address the principle of declared analytical tolerance — the permitted deviation between the value declared on the label and the result of an actual analysis of a sample taken during an inspection. A producer who systematically operates at the edge of this tolerance rather than designing the formulation with an appropriate safety margin runs the risk of recurring non-conformities in official inspections — even if a single batch formally still falls within the permitted range of deviation.

Feed additives — a separate regulatory regime

Substances added to feed to achieve a particular nutritional, technological, zootechnical or other effect — feed additives — are subject to a separate, more rigorous regulatory regime than standard feed materials. In EU law this is governed by Regulation (EC) No 1831/2003 on additives for use in animal nutrition, which introduces a requirement for a scientific assessment of a substance's safety and efficacy and its formal authorisation before it may be used in feed production.

In practice this means a producer cannot independently decide to use a new, unauthorised substance in a formulation — even if it appears effective and safe in light of available knowledge. It must go through a formal authorisation procedure, including a risk assessment, before it is included in the list of authorised feed additives. The same regime also sets the conditions of use for individual additives — permitted target animal species, maximum doses or withdrawal periods — exceeding which constitutes a breach of the regulations regardless of whether the substance itself is authorised for use.

Producers of feed additives and premixes therefore operate in an area of heightened regulatory requirements, which is also reflected in what is expected of them under voluntary certification — companies in this segment often implement the dedicated FAMI-QS standard, which supplements GMP+ requirements in areas specific to additive production. More information on the FAMI-QS page.

Animal by-products in feed

Some feed materials of animal origin are additionally subject to regulations on animal by-products — in EU law this is governed by Regulation (EC) No 1069/2009. It sets out the rules for classifying materials of animal origin by risk level, the permitted ways of using them — including the conditions under which certain categories of such material may enter the feed chain at all — and requirements for establishments that process them.

For companies whose activity does not directly involve processing such materials, knowledge of these regulations matters mainly in the context of checking the origin of incoming raw materials — that is, making sure that the supplier of a given feed material of animal origin holds the appropriate approval and supplies a product that complies with the applicable classification. This is one element of the broader supplier risk analysis required both by feed hygiene regulations and by the GMP+ system.

Registration and approval of feed business operators

Before an operator starts an activity on the feed market — production, trade, transport or storage — it must notify the competent supervisory authority of that activity. The law provides for two different procedures in this respect, depending on the type and level of risk of the activity: registration and approval.

Registration is the simpler form of notification — the operator informs the supervisory authority that it is starting a given activity, and the authority enters it in the relevant register. This applies to most typical activities on the feed market, e.g. trading, storing or transporting feed materials and compound feed that do not involve elevated risk. Approval is a more demanding procedure — the supervisory authority verifies the conditions under which the activity will be carried out before granting consent to start it, which typically applies to higher-risk activities, such as producing certain feed additives or processing materials of animal origin subject to separate regulations.

Whether a given operator is subject to the registration or the approval requirement depends on the specific type and scope of the activity carried out, as set out in the regulations — where in doubt, it is worth clarifying this directly with the competent supervisory authority before starting the activity, since carrying it out without the required entry in the register or without approval constitutes a breach of the law, regardless of the actual quality of the product manufactured or traded. It is worth remembering that registration or approval of the establishment is, in Poland, also a necessary element for companies applying for GMP+ certification — the certification auditor checks whether the operator has fulfilled this obligation before even beginning to assess compliance with the requirements of the standard itself.

Official supervision of feed safety in Poland

In Poland, supervision of compliance with feed law is exercised primarily by the Veterinary Inspection, acting under the Feed Act and its accompanying implementing regulations, which implement and supplement the EU rules described above. As part of official control, this authority verifies, among other things, the hygienic conditions of production, the correctness of labelling, the compliance of declared composition with the actual product, and the maintenance of the required documentation by registered and approved operators.

Official control includes both planned inspections, carried out according to a schedule based on a risk analysis of the given activity, and ad hoc inspections — for example in response to a report of an irregularity, a sample test result indicating that permitted values have been exceeded, or an incident reported through the early-warning system. This supervision operates entirely independently of any voluntary certification — an official authority does not exempt a GMP+-certified operator from inspection, although in practice a well-documented quality system built for certification purposes usually makes an official inspection go more smoothly, because much of the required documentation is already prepared and up to date.

It is also worth noting that the scope and frequency of official inspections are usually linked to the risk profile of the given activity and its compliance history — an operator with recurring non-conformities may be subject to more frequent or more detailed inspections than one with an established, good track record. This is a further practical argument for keeping a quality system genuinely functioning rather than merely "on paper" — regardless of whether the company holds voluntary certification or relies solely on statutory requirements.

The relationship between mandatory law and voluntary GMP+ certification

GMP+ certification is not — and was never meant to be — a substitute for feed law. The standard was created as the market's response to the need for an additional, standardised confirmation of a supplier's reliability, going beyond what mere compliance with minimum statutory requirements guarantees — we describe the origin and purpose of the scheme in more detail on the What is GMP+ page. In practice this means certification typically sets requirements more detailed than the legal minimum — for example in documenting HACCP analysis, managing suppliers or a contamination monitoring plan — and is subject to regular, independent audit verification on a cycle agreed with the certification body, usually more frequent and more thorough than a typical official inspection covering the given operator.

This does not mean official control is less important — it is the one that carries legal force and the consequences set out directly in the regulations, whereas failing to meet certification requirements results, at worst, in the loss of the certificate, which matters commercially but not legally. In practice the two mechanisms complement each other well: the law sets a hard, enforceable safety threshold, and market certification builds on that foundation an additional layer of trust, legible to customers from different countries who do not necessarily know the details of a given supplier's national supervisory system.

How legal requirements shape GMP+ requirements

A large part of the GMP+ standard's requirements is not invented from scratch by the organisation managing the scheme, but directly references existing legal obligations — and then develops them with an additional level of detail, documentation and verification. The obligation to hold a HACCP-based system, arising from feed hygiene regulations, translates in GMP+ into specific requirements on the form and content of the hazard analysis, the way critical control points are set and how often it is reviewed. Traceability, a general principle of food law, is made more precise in GMP+ through requirements on specific records, how long they must be kept and how a company should be able to demonstrate the link between a product batch and its incoming raw materials.

A similar relationship applies to supplier management — the law requires general operator responsibility for the safety of the product placed on the market, including, indirectly, for the quality of the raw materials received, and GMP+ translates this into specific supplier qualification and evaluation procedures, described in detail on the GMP+ requirements page. From the perspective of a company implementing certification, this brings a practical benefit — a well-built system of legal compliance is a solid starting point for implementing GMP+, because much of the foundation (HACCP, traceability, incident-response procedures) already exists and requires "only" development and adaptation to the standard's detailed requirements, rather than being built from zero.

In advisory practice we often meet companies that wrongly assume that, since they meet the legal requirements, implementing certification will be a formality limited to filling in a few extra documents. Reality usually looks different — certification requires not only having the right procedures in place, but also systematic evidence that they are applied in day-to-day practice, gathered in a way that allows easy verification by an auditor. Companies that treat legal compliance as a starting point rather than an end in itself usually go through the GMP+ implementation process more smoothly than those that see the two layers of requirements as entirely separate administrative tasks. More on the course of implementation and certification itself can be found on the GMP+ certification process page.

Glossary of terms

Feed business operator

A natural or legal person responsible for meeting feed law requirements within the activity it carries out — production, trade, storage or transport — relating to feed materials, compound feed or feed additives.

Feed establishment registration

The basic form of notifying the competent supervisory authority of an activity, required before starting it for most typical types of activity on the feed market.

Feed establishment approval

A more demanding formal procedure under which the supervisory authority verifies the conditions of the activity before granting consent to start it — applicable to higher-risk activities defined in the regulations.

Official feed control

Control carried out by the competent supervisory authority to verify a feed business operator's compliance with the applicable regulations — independent of any voluntary quality certification.

Principle of traceability

The obligation to ensure it is possible to establish the origin of a feed material and its further distribution at every stage of the production, processing and trading chain.

Precautionary principle

A principle of food law allowing temporary risk-management measures to be taken in a situation of scientific uncertainty about a hazard, before full data confirming or ruling out its existence are available.