GMP+ conference at Victam Asia: “going responsible”

The GMP+ Feed Certification scheme was initiated and developed in 1992 by the Dutch feed industry in response to various more or less serious incidents involving contamination in feed materials. Although it started as a national scheme, it has developed to become an international scheme that is managed by GMP+ International in collaboration with various international stakeholders.

Even though the GMP+ Feed Certification scheme originated from a feed safety perspective, in 2013 the first feed responsibility standard has been published. “For this purpose, two modules are created: GMP+ Feed Safety Assurance (focussed on feed safety) and GMP+ Feed Responsibility Assurance (focussed on responsible feed)”, explained Wolters.

Wolters further explained that the development of the Feed Safety Assurance has been fed by questions that GMP+ companies got regarding their efforts to work ‘responsibly’, “We only had feed safety assurance standards, but this doesn’t prove that the company is also working in a sustainable and responsible way”, explained Wolters.

The standards have been focused on responsible soy and have been available since last year for the transport, processing and transport companies, “We now also want to do this for the compound feed industry. This takes a bit more time because the rules and criteria that feed compounders have to deal with are different from the ones that deal with handlers and transporters for example. Next to soy we can then also add more standards from stakeholders to our own feed responsibility standards”.

The conference GMP+ International was held on April 8 and attracted around 50 attendees.