The hottest interpretation of EU food traceability

Interpretation of EU food traceability labeling system

traceability is a general requirement of EU food laws, covering all food, feed, etc. It is defined as: in all stages of production, processing and sales, it is possible to trace and trace a kind of food, feed, animals used for processing food, or substances intentionally added to a kind of food or feed. Traceability is the key to ensuring food safety. Only when this condition is met can risk management personnel identify the relevant food, quickly and accurately ban the sale of banned dangerous products, notify consumers or units and individuals responsible for monitoring food, and trace the origin of the problem along the entire food chain and correct it if necessary

EU Act No. 178/2002 proposed the general principles and requirements of relevant food laws, which came into force on January 1, 2005. According to this law, all food sold in the EU must bear traceable labels. This law is mainly aimed at EU enterprises, but it is also effective for imported food

according to the requirements of the act, all food and feed must be marked with the name, address, product name and transaction date of the manufacturer, and the relevant data must be kept for at least 5 years for tracing. Although Article 18 of Act No. 178/2002 does not specify and standardize the marked data, in order to establish a traceability system, basically the relevant information should include the following categories: the name and address of the supplier and the name of the product supplied, the name and address of the sales object and the name of the product sold, and the date of transaction or delivery; Transaction volume of products, bar codes, and other relevant information (such as quantitative packaging or bulk, types of fruits or vegetables, raw materials or processed products)

according to the provisions of the act, the scope of traceability includes: food, feed, animals used for processing food and any other substances intentionally or desired to be added to food and feed. Traceability should be established at all stages of production, processing and distribution, so that the EU traceability system covers the whole food chain from farmland to dinner table. However, as an operator, traceability only covers the scope of the previous and subsequent steps in the supply chain, and does not stipulate any methods, systems, and processes; It depends on the commercial field to adopt the most appropriate process, and depends on the commercial activities and their scale. Therefore, the food and feed industry operators are mainly responsible for food safety: 1) they should be able to identify where the products they provide come from and go; 2) Properly establish systems and processes so that authorities can provide such information when they require records; 3) Provide labels to facilitate traceability

there are also provisions on Traceability in EU act 852/2004: food industry practitioners who raise animals or produce primary products made of animals must keep records higher than the general requirement of 75db of a general laboratory machine, and when necessary, the relevant information contained in these records D. the length and force of each length, including the tensile, compressive, low cycle and high cycle fatigue test units of materials and parts The display digits are provided to authoritative institutions and other food industry employees who purchase goods by means of dynamic exchange. Records that must be kept: (1) the nature and source of the feed fed to animals; (2) Medication and other treatment methods for animals, the date of medication and the time of stopping medication; (3) Diseases that may affect the safety of products made from animals; (4) The analysis results obtained from animal samples may be related to human health; (5) Relevant reports obtained from the inspection of animals and products of animal origin. Articles 7 to 9 of act 852/2004 also provide guidance for the development of national and EU health guidelines, including two aspects of information: on the one hand, the accurate and reasonable use of livestock drugs, additives, plant protection products and pesticides and their traceability; The other is the preparation, storage, use and traceability of feed

there are also many EU regulations that stipulate the traceability requirements of food. For example, the Council Act No. 89/396 of June 14, 1989 stipulates that food must be marked to determine the batch, that is, in order to ensure the free transportation of products and consumers have sufficient information, it is necessary to establish a common system to identify the batch of packaged food that has been produced, and identify food through batch number coding. EU regulation 2065/2001 puts forward traceability requirements for fish, requires that consumers be provided with information about fishery products and aquatic products, and makes special provisions on the marking of fishery products and aquatic products: fresh and frozen foods must be correctly marked or labeled before they can be sold to end consumers; The mark or label must reflect the commercial name of the variety, production method (live water, seawater or aquaculture), and the area of capture. EU regulations No. 1907/90, 1906/90 and 2295/2003 put forward traceability requirements for eggs and poultry: regulation No. 1907/90 requires that eggs imported from third countries must indicate the origin on the packaging; Regulation 1906/90 requires that fresh frozen poultry imported from countries outside the European Union must be marked with the origin; Regulation No. 2295/2003 introduced detailed provisions on how to implement parliament regulation No. 1907/99 on the marketing standards of eggs. Act No. 2200/196 recently put forward traceability requirements for fruits and vegetables: fresh vegetables and fruits and dried fruits of a certain type must be marked with the origin. But this rule also applies to potatoes, grapes, bananas, peas, feed beans and olives

in terms of traceability of cattle products, EU regulation No. 1760/2000 requires the establishment of a recognition and registration system for the marks of cattle, beef and beef products. At each stage of beef processing, the following information must be available: the origin of the cattle to which the beef belongs, the reference code to associate the meat with animals or animal populations, and the location of meat processing (slaughterhouses and cutting farms) approved by the European Union; In every link of beef processing, the relationship between the beef purchase batch number and the shipment batch number must be established between the processing sites. The traceability of beef must also be guaranteed by the following conditions: (1) all the transportation of animals in the EU and in some cases, the transportation of animals in the member states requires a permit; (2) The individual identification code of each animal is consistent with the code after slaughtering in the slaughterhouse, so that different links of beef from processing to sales are systematically recorded; (3) Identification system of individual cattle: the individual identification data of cattle and transport cattle from birth to slaughter are recorded in the centralized database

regulation No. 1830/2003 of the European Parliament and the Council stipulates the traceability and marking of genetically modified products and the traceability of food and feed produced from genetically modified products, requiring operators engaged in genetically modified food to ensure that the following written information is transmitted to consumers: (1) indicate each food ingredient or food additive produced by genetically modified substances; (2) For the food without a list of ingredients, it should be explained that the food is produced by genetically modified products; (3) Corresponding systems and standardized management procedures must be established to preserve the above information in order to trace the source and destination of genetically modified substances. The above information must be retained for at least 5 years

in order to cooperate with the implementation of the above regulations, EU countries have taken corresponding measures, such as the provisions of the Royal Decree of Belgium on self-control, compulsory disclosure and traceability of the food chain, the Royal Decree of Spain No. 217/2004 on the certification and registration of agents, processing sites and containers in the milk industry, the provisions on the registration of milk transportation means, the provisions on the traceability of raw milk in the Italian decree, etc. Traceability requirements have become an important guiding principle for EU authorities to achieve food safety and animal and plant health and ensure the normal operation of the EU internal market

reprinted from: China Food News