The European Commission’s SCoPAFF (Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food & Feed) positively assessed the upgraded version of the FEFAC Guide to Good Hygiene Practice for the manufacturing of compound feed and premixes for food producing animals.
The “EFMC Guide”, was initially established in 2007 by feed industry experts and through consultation with EU feed chain partners. Its main goal is to facilitate implementation of the hygiene and HACCP requirements of Regulation (EC) No 183/2005 on Feed Hygiene for compound feed and premix manufacturers.
With its third upgrade, the practical tool for feed hygiene compliance now includes among others more detailed guidelines on the management of microbial feed safety risks (salmonella) as well as aflatoxins in maize.
FEFAC President Ruud Tijssens said “the endorsement by EU authorities illustrates the feed industry’s commitment to maintaining and improving the high feed safety standards. It acknowledges the fact FEFAC takes up its share of the responsibility for feed safety management along the feed chain for the benefit of minimising safety risks in the food chain on the base of the “top of the pyramid” approach”.
FEFAC has also encouraged feed safety management programmes to participate in a global feed safety benchmarking exercise under the auspices of the ITC Standards map (feed safety observatory) and IFIF at the International Feed Regulators Meeting in Atlanta on 26-28 January 2015.
At the 8th IFRM, organised by IFIF and FAO, FEFAC will discuss with other IFIF members and global feed regulators next steps to strengthen cooperation between official control and industry own-control systems in order to further improve feed safety management capacity at global level. This important topic will also be discussed at the core of the 58th FEFAC Annual Meeting in Cologne on 10 June 2015.
