ESSA hygiene guideline
ESSA - European Sprouted Seeds AssociationESSA hygiene guideline
To help producers across Europe and to give a useful tool to competent authorities, ESSA has developed a hygiene guideline for the production of sprouts and seeds for sprouting.
On 13 December 2016, the Biological Section of the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed of DG Santé (Directorate General for Health and Food Safety, European Commission) endorsed the final version of the European Hygiene Guideline for the Production of sprouts and seeds for sprouting issued by ESSA.
The guideline was translated into all official European Union languages (except Irish) and published in the Official Journal of the European Union. The publications in different languages can be found here: Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Greek, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish.
ESSA’s work on this hygiene guideline complements the rules for sprout producers that the European Commission has put in place in Regulations 208/2013, 209/2013, 210/2013 and 211/2013 (amended by Commission Regulation (EU) No 704/2014). It also gives a more detailed interpretation to the general hygiene requirements contained in regulation (EU) 852/2004 and in particular Annex I of that regulation.
The ESSA Hygiene Guideline should be used by the producers of sprouts in order to improve the hygiene practices. Competent authorities in different EU member states can also use this document as reference to food business operators involved in production of sprouts and production of seeds for sprouting.
After much work invested to make sprout production safe, the hygiene guideline is an additional component to make official controls easier and clearer for operators and authorities across Europe.