The establishment and development of the scheme was primarily the result of demand from the subsequent links in the animal production chain for better control of feed safety. Another contributory factor was the damage caused by more and less serious contamination incidents.
In the initial phase the demand arose for better differentiation in an increasingly saturated European sales market for animal products. Since 1999, feed & food safety has been a top issue internationally both politically and commercially, because of serious incidents in the feed sector. Because of this, demonstrable assurance of feed safety has become a sales prerequisite.
The basic principle of the GMP+ FSA scheme is that the feed chain is part of the whole animal production chain. Proper assurance of feed safety worldwide is a high priority. Companies must live up to their responsibilities and respond properly and convincingly to the needs of animal production. The GMP+ Feed Safety Assurance scheme is an aid to realise this.
GMP+ FSA has been developed since 1992. It was managed from 1992 up until 2009 by the Product Board Animal Feed, The Hague, The Netherlands. Since 2010, this scheme is managed by GMP+ International. The documents within the GMP+ FSA scheme are subdivided into a number of series. A description follows of these:
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A
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These documents contain the requirements for participation in the certification scheme for companies and certification bodies (framework regulation, the use of logo's, etc.). This series also includes a general list of definitions and abbreviations. |
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B
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These documents contain the international standards and additional country notes for use by companies with respect to the various feed products and production phases including cultivation and industrial production, treatment and processing, collection, trade, means of transport, storage and transhipment. | ||||||||||||
These documents are divided in several subgroups, with a code and a name
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C
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These documents contain the Rules of Certification including those for the approval of certification bodies and auditors, the frequency of audits, minimum audit time, assessment criteria, checklists, etc. There is also an explanation of how the supervision by certification bodies is implemented and of how GMP+ International supervises the certification process. | ||||||||||||
| D Interpretations and accompanying texts |
In addition to the above-mentioned normative documents, there are also supporting documents in the D series including a list of frequently-asked questions, manuals and guidances with additional information. | ||||||||||||
The procedure for establishing these documents can be found here.