What is GMP+? Certification, audits and the database

GMP+ is a private certification scheme for feed safety and responsible feed, run by GMP+ International in Rijswijk, the Netherlands. Companies that produce, trade, store, tranship or transport animal feed are audited against it by an independent certification body. Those that pass are listed in a public company database, and that listing, not the PDF certificate, is what a buyer checks before fixing business.

Where GMP+ comes from

In 1992, after several incidents with contaminated feed materials, the Dutch feed industry set up a feed safety certification scheme called GMP, for Good Manufacturing Practices. GMP+ International describes itself as a not-for-profit private organisation with more than 19,000 certified companies in 90 countries (gmpplus.org, September 2026).

GMP+ is a private scheme, not law: under F0.0 every certified company remains responsible for complying with feed legislation, and stricter national rules take precedence. GMP+ International owns the scheme and maintains the database. It does not do the certification audit itself, but can run a parallel audit afterwards to check the certification body's work.

The GMP+ Feed Certification scheme: FSA and FRA

The scheme documents come in three layers (Framework, Requirements, Support); the requirements for companies sit in two modules:

• GMP+ FSA (Feed Safety Assurance) covers the safety of the feed itself. The core document is R1.0, surrounded by Technical Specifications (TS) on, among other things, purchasing, the product list, forbidden products and fuels, sampling, monitoring and transport.
• GMP+ FRA (Feed Responsibility Assurance) covers the origin and footprint of the feed and was developed from 2013 onwards. The core document is R5.0, with market initiatives (MI) such as RTRS (responsible soy), GMO-controlled feed and carbon footprint of feed.

Take the current document list from gmpplus.org.

How GMP+ certification works

Certification is per scope. The scopes that come up in a port are trade in feed, storage and transhipment, road transport, rail transport, inland waterway and short sea shipping, and affreightment; F0.3 lists the others, including the production and laboratory scopes.

You implement R1.0 and the applicable technical specifications, then contract a certification body accepted by GMP+ International. Acceptance runs under CR1.0: accreditation against ISO/IEC 17021-1 and ISO 22003-1, or, for a body that certifies only inland waterway transport and short sea shipping, accreditation against ISO/IEC 17020 and/or operating under an approved certification system such as ISO 9001, with loading compartment inspection in its certified scope. CR1.0 also provides for an annual audit at each certification body and witness audits of its auditors. The certification process follows CR2.0 for FSA scopes and CR3.0 for FRA scopes.

Under CR2.0, stage 1 of the initial certification audit takes place within three months of concluding the certification agreement, and stage 2 no more than four months after stage 1. After a positive decision the certificate is valid for a maximum of three years, with surveillance audits at twelve and twenty-four months (plus or minus two months). For producers of compound feed, premixtures, feed additives and feed materials in Europe, one of them is unannounced: no prior notice at all in the Netherlands, one working day in Germany, two working days elsewhere in Europe. Outside Europe an unannounced audit is voluntary, with three working days' notice.

Inland waterway transport and short sea shipping work differently: one certification inspection within three months of the agreement instead of a two-stage audit, a certificate of at most two years, and a repeat inspection every two years without surveillance audits.

The GMP+ company database, and why a buyer checks it

The public GMP+ company database lists certified companies, certification bodies, laboratories and partner organisations, searchable by name, location, status and scope:

Status	What it means
Temporary accepted	On the way to certification; may carry out the activities for up to four months, but may not use the GMP+ logo
Certified	Meets the requirements for the listed scopes and may offer GMP+ assured products or services
Suspended	Temporarily not compliant, for up to three months; may not offer GMP+ assured products or services
Withdrawn	Certificate ended, either for non-compliance (excluded from the scheme for at least one year) or because the agreement was cancelled

GMP+ International puts the duty to check on the certified company itself. The scope matters as much as the status. A counterparty certified for trade in feed is not thereby certified for storage and transhipment. The same discipline applies to trade association membership: see what GAFTA is and what its contracts do and what FOSFA is.

GMP+ in transport, storage and transhipment

For road and rail, the previous cargo question is settled in the International Database Transport (for) Feed (IDTF). A previous load is acceptable only if the IDTF lists the product and assigns it one of four cleaning regimes, running from dry cleaning (A) and cleaning with water (B) to water with a food-grade cleaning agent (C) and disinfection (D). Without such a regime the product counts as a forbidden load, and the compartment may carry feed again only after release by an independent loading compartment inspector or under a procedure authorised by the competent authority. For inland waterway and short sea shipping, TS1.9 points to the product list in Appendix 1 of TS3.3 instead, which falls back on the IDTF for products it does not list; for sea-going vessels, the company arranging the transport sets its own criteria by risk assessment. The IDTF is maintained by the ICRT, in which GMP+ International and other feed organisations take part. Compare banned and acceptable previous cargoes under FOSFA.

Before feed is loaded by sea, inland waterway or rail, the loading compartment is inspected: empty, clean, dry where required, and free of residues and foreign odour. For inland waterway and short sea shipping, TS3.3 makes this loading compartment inspection (LCI) the responsibility of the principal or owner of the goods, for every food or feed load. It is carried out by a control organisation certified to ISO 17020 or equivalent, or by a trained loading inspector employed by the company that orders the transport, typically the manufacturer or trader. Records are to be available on board for at least two years, unless national legislation provides otherwise.

On sampling and reporting, see sampling rules in the agricultural trade and what an inspection certificate and an inspection report actually say.

What it means in practice

For a trader, GMP+ is a check before fixing and a line in the contract. Look the counterparty up and note the status, the scope and the certification body.

For a terminal or storage company, storage and transhipment is a scope of its own, and the evidence is mostly ordinary operational records: cleaning per silo or tank, previous product, the inspection before loading.

For a road carrier, the work is per load: the IDTF lookup, the cleaning it prescribes, and the last three loads with their cleaning on record.

For an inspection company, the loading compartment inspection report ends up in the cargo file next to the draft survey, the sampling receipt and the outturn.

FOSS

FOSS is software for inspection companies and port operations, with a sector specialist at the table. Measurements are entered once and feed nine report types; the outturn per medium is set against the bill of lading weight with an automatic protest flag on a shortage of more than 0.5%; sampling is tracked; the client portal shows live status; the system works offline on board. If you want to see how your own reporting flow would fit, get in touch.