Milling News
Feed Safety Awareness in Southern Europe by Johan den Hartog – Managing Director of GMP+ International GMP+ International facilitates access for Italian companies by introducing the GMP+ FSA Country Note Italy Well attended workshop marks fast growing Feed Safety Awareness in Southern Europe. Towards the end of 2015, nearly 100 representatives of Italian Feed companies attended a workshop organized by GMP+ International in Bologna Italy, to introduce the GMP+ FSA Country Note Italy (GMP+ BCN-IT). GMP+ International manages the unique GMP+ Feed Certification scheme (GMP+ FC scheme). This certification scheme is focused on controlling feed safety (GMP+ Feed Safety Assurance) and responsibility (GMP+ Feed Responsibility Assurance). The scheme consists of standards and rules for certification and is intended for companies active in the feed chain around the world. Since 2010 the number of GMP+ FSA certified companies in Italy increased by 900 percent to almost 400 companies today, which makes this country the sixth most important country for GMP+ International. The introduction of this Country Note is the result of initiatives taken by local feed companies and certification bodies to overcome some of the most important hurdles for these companies in establishing a GMP+ feed safety management system and for getting a GMP+ FSA certificate.
Why get a Country Note?
During the workshop representatives of GMP+ certified companies Agricola Grains S.P.A and Methodo Chemicals S.R.L, shared their experiences and bottlenecks with the audience. The chain approach, the founding concept of GMP+ FSA, often causes issues with sourcing of feed materials in countries where the density of GMP+ participants is relativelylow. This Italian country note, which is purely a temporary standard; applicable until the end 2019, is meant to address issues in the following areas; Gatekeeper protocols to allow sourcing of non-assured feed materials 32 | February 2016 - Milling and Grain
Requirements to combine the production of GMP+ assured and non-assured feed in the same production facility Special conditions allowing transport companies to perform gatekeeper protocols, subject to approval of the producer or trader
Labeling conditions for BCN-IT and non-assured products
This country note offers Italian companies the opportunity to participate in the GMP+ scheme -- even when their suppliers are not yet utilising a certified feed safety management system. The country note can only be granted for a period of just a few years, in which assured, certified supply chains can be achieved. So for this reason, any products that are produced by a company who possess a country note, can only be placed on the local, Italian market. Dik Wolters, Program Manager Standards of GMP+ International comments “this project is a great example how the involved stakeholders committed themselves to achieve compliance with the high GMP+ feed safety standard. They joined forces and took their responsibility to solve some issues in the long road to GMP+ feed safety assurance. Over the next months we will closely monitor the experiences of Italian companies in order to make this Country Note as practical as possible, yet ensuring safe practices.” An Italian company can apply this country note in addition to one of the basic GMP+ standards, from the 1st of January 2016 onwards. Compliance is checked by the auditor. A successful audit results in a certificate with relevant scopes. For details about application and certification of this country note in combination with a basic GMP+ standard, a company should contact a certification body approved for GMP+ certification by GMP+ International. Please also refer to the GMP+ website. Certification bodies, who are approved to carry out GMP+ certification, will be informed separately by GMP+ International about specific certification details. The Italian translation of the Country Note Italy as well as a FAQ-document regarding this country note will all be available shortly.