EFIP Chain Vision

EFIP

European Feed Ingredients Platform

EFIP vision on safety assurance in the feed chain.

 

EFIP sees safe feed as a prerequisite for the success of livestock production in the EU

Livestock production plays an important role in agriculture in the European Community. Its viability depends on consumer trust in the safety of the animal products produced and on the availability of feed that has no adverse effect on the health of the animals kept.

 

EFIP builds on work done by the EU legislator

The members of EFIP consider that the European Union has established a very robust regulatory system that aims to ensure safety throughout the feed chain. This regulatory system comprises general principles for the operators and authorities involved, hygiene rules for the operators, norms for the safety of feed products and rules for controls by authorities. This new legal framework fills a gap that the legislator has so far left open and provides for the necessary harmonisation of feed safety rules at the level of the European Community. It recognises that the goals set can only be met with the full commitment of the operators involved. It also sees a role for sectors in supporting their operators in achieving these goals. The setting up of EFIP is a big step forward in this direction.

 

EFIP will have a global reach

The supply of “ingredients” to the compound feed industry is a coherent entity in the chain, although it can involve characteristically very different materials such as grains, oilseed meals, vegetable and animal oils and fats, milk products, sugar beet pulp, additives and products from the food industry used as feed ingredients. EFIP is working on harmonising the safety practices at this basic level of the chain. Its priority focus is the European level, but the actual structure of the supply chain will lead EFIP to adopt a global perspective.

 

EFIP favours freedom for ingredients sectors to develop tailor made safety rules

EFIP’s view about the responsibility of operators is strongly aligned to the basic principle of food law: each operator in the chain must accept their own responsibility in providing safe products. The legislation prescribes the measures which the operator must implement to achieve this. The operator will apply these generically formulated rules and, by doing this, the operator adapts the rules to serve feed safety from a company perspective. This activity can be harmonised at sector level, the result of which should be transparent to all partners in the chain. The imposition of having detailed means to achieve feed safety up the feed chain is considered ineffective by EFIP. The founding principle of EFIP is therefore subsidiarity of food chain safety and self-management of feed safety.

 

EFIP aims to reduce administration costs

Safety schemes should remain fit for purpose and affordable for the concerned operators. A perfect theoretical approach is of little value if a sector is not committed or capable of implementing it. In general, chain coordination should aim to limit operators’ costs in administrating safety schemes and reduce the frequency of costly audits, whilst assuring the necessary degree of safety and confidence from users.

 

EFIP invites other sectors to step up their efforts in EU harmonisation of safety rules

Co-ordination and trust are essential factors towards safety in the chain. This must be achieved both within each sector and between sectors in a segment and between segments throughout the chain.

Mutual recognition is the cornerstone of this co-ordination effort. Safety is indeed organised via a superposition of systems, from very general principles at the top (e.g. the General Food Law Regulation 178/2002), through to generic hygiene rules (Feed Hygiene Regulation 183/2005, or ISO 22000) and product safety features (Undesirable Substances Directive 2002/32), down to very precise and specific schemes close to the operators (sector specific safety schemes). These schemes suit the specific nature of the feed products involved, i.e. they suit the bulk character of most feed ingredients, the availability of veterinary legislation in the case of animal fats and the availability of specific safety legislation in the case of additives. It is not conceivable to assure links between all sectors’ specific schemes and all national schemes at the next level of the chain: this would imply an endless number of bilateral recognitions. Such recognition can only be managed between segments which for their part integrate sectoral efforts. This integration should be achieved by the establishment of European benchmark codes for the following segments: the industrial production, the trade, the transport, the storage and the handling of feed materials and compound feed and the rearing of food producing animals, as well as the production of foodstuffs.

 

EFIP seeks for harmonisation whilst respecting the specificities of its sectors

Third party certification can be an important tool to assure the proper implementation of the various schemes. Trust building, however, is an important prerequisite; certification is not an alternative to trust. It is important for each sector to have the necessary degree of freedom to develop its own code or related text, on the basis of which it can develop and drive its own certification rules, if necessary. Each sector should also have the freedom to integrate and manage the equivalence between the various third party certification schemes under which it operates. In the meantime, each segment should have a prominent role in setting common criteria for certification with the aim to harmonise the certification rules amongst the sectors involved. Furthermore, any private certification scheme should anticipate potential equivalency between private certification and work performed by the control authorities.

 

EFIP calls for a dialogue amongst the various segments of the feed chain

Segments should work together and develop a mutual understanding between their benchmark codes.

The EFIP benchmark code was developed in order to assure the interface with the compound feed industry safety scheme(s) and to meet the legitimate expectation of this segment to operate with safety-committed partners.