Mobile feed milling and mixing plants

In principle, each feed supplier must have the eligibility of delivery into the QS scheme. However, it may be necessary, particularly when entering new markets, to purchase goods from non-certified producers or traders for a defined period. If you want to purchase feed for feed production from a non-certified supplier, you must act as a gate keeper for the supplier and thus take over the quality assurance for that feed.

Detailed information on the gate-keeper regulation can be found in Annex 9.2 to Guideline Feed Sector.

Producers of fatty acids from chemical refining, fatty acid distillates from physical refining, monoesters of propylene glycol and fatty acid, blended fats and oils, which contain fatty acids and blended fatty acids, crude fish oil and crude coconut oil as well as producers of blended fats and oils which contain fatty acids and blended fatty acids must carry out a positive release sampling before marketing their end products.

In addition, positive release sampling must be carried out for crude fatty acids from splitting and pure distilled fatty acids from splitting if a raw material other than vegetable oil (QS number 02.20.01) was used for the production. Also, for fatty acids, esterified with glycerol, salts from fatty acids, mono-, di- and triglycerides of fatty acids and mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids esterified with organic acids positive release sampling must be carried out if they are not produced with or from fatty acids from the splitting of vegetable oil (QS number 02.20.01).

These products can only be placed on the market if uncritical analysis results on certain parameters, e.g. dioxins, are already on available and handled to the customers.

For more information on the positive release sampling in QS feed monitoring, see the Guideline Feed Monitoring (valid from 01.01.2024).

QS has agreed a mutual recognition of audits and/or certificates with several international standard owners of the feed industry to avoid double auditing of companies.

For the recognition by one or more other standard owners log in the QS database with your access data and select for the corresponding location via the tab Recognitions under Recognition in third-party systems through which third-party systems you wish a recognition by placing a check mark at the appropriate standard (GMP+ Int., Ovocom, AIC, AMA, Qualimat Transport, Fami-QS).

If you wish a recognition by QM-Milk or KAT, place a check mark in the location data directly under Recognitions at Participation QM-Milk or Participation KAT. For the recognition of small-scale producers (feed material production) by GMP+ as well as of mobile grinding and mixing plants by AMA, your certification body deposits the recognition request.

For deliveries to EFISC GTP-certified companies, you only need to provide your customer with the QS certificate.

You can find further information in the Annex 9.1 to the Guideline Feed sector.

To avoid double auditing, QS has agreed a mutual recognition of audits and/or certificates with several international standard owners.

Based on the recognition, you can deliver to the QS scheme. To obtain the QS eligibility of delivery, register your company directly in the QS database. It is important that you indicate the standard by which your company is certified as certification scheme. The registration of pastus+ certified small-scale producers and mobile milling and mixing plants in the QS database is carried out via AMA.

CSA GTP-certified companies do not yet need to register in the QS database to deliver into the QS scheme. For now, it is enough to present a valid certificate, whereby the respective area of activity must be indicated on the certificate. Oqualim-certified companies who comply with the standard RCNA International and the additional module Annex 1: Purchase requirements for goods and services and wish the eligibility of delivery in the QS scheme will be published on the website of Oqualim (www.oqualim.com) and as recognized Oqualim locations (France) in the scheme participant of the QS database.

You can find out which standards are recognized for which activity in Annex 9.1 to the Guideline Feed sector.

If you want to participate in the QS scheme as a feed company owner, register in the QS database. There you also choose a certification body that will perform the audit at your company. After successful auditing, feed producers and traders sign a scheme agreement with QS. Service providers like warehouse keepers and transport companies are contractually integrated into the QS scheme via the certification body.

You can find out which certification bodies are approved in the QS scheme from this list.

With increased exposure of products with undesirable substances, QS can react immediately by creating a binding ad-hoc monitoring plan. Within this plan, QS can increase the number of analyses of the affected products, deviating from the Guideline Feed Monitoring. As far as relevant for the company, the ad-hoc monitoring plan must be implemented in addition to regular monitoring.

You can find out if there are currently ad-hoc monitoring plans in Annex 8.6 Ad-hoc monitoring plans to the Guideline Feed Monitoring.

When do I have to be certificated as a feed company?

If you want to deliver feed to a QS certified customer, you must be eligible to deliver the correspondent products into the QS scheme. This is possible either via a QS certification or via a certification according to a standard recognized by QS. Excluded from the certification obligation are only pure trade, storage, transhipment, and transport of packaged goods as well as pure agent activities.

Further information on the certification obligation in the QS scheme can be found in the Annex 9.3 to the Guideline Feed Sector.

Feed producers, traders and agricultural businesses that mix their own feed rations must participate in feed monitoring. Excluded from QS feed monitoring are pure delivery traders and traders of exclusively packaged goods unless an additional control plan or ad-hoc monitoring plan also obliges them.

Further information on feed monitoring can be found in the Guideline Feed Monitoring (valid from 01.01.2024) and Annex 9.3 to the Guideline Feed Sector, as well as in Annex 8.5 Additional control plans and Annex 8.6 Ad-hoc monitoring plans to the Guideline Feed Monitoring.

All the requirements that you, as a feed company owner, must meet to participate in the QS scheme can be found in the guidelines for the feed sector. The guidelines are published in our document center.

The requirements in the QS scheme go beyond the legal requirements. Particularly, this includes the participation in the QS feed monitoring, compliance with an exclusion list of products that may not be used as feed in the QS scheme, and specific cleaning requirements for the transport of feed.