Low-level European voluntary standard (CWA) “Authenticity in the Feed and Food Chain – General Principles and Basic Requirements

The basis for the content of the guideline will be built on the concepts, terms, definitions and overall good practice in relation to food authenticity which already exist (provided by WP1). In addition the views of the stakeholders directly or indirectly involved with the Authent-Net project, and from the result of the external and open hearing that is required as part of the standardization process; see below. The resulting document will be consensus-based and have the same structure as international standards with similar content (in particular ISO 22005 (2007) “Traceability in feed and food chain - General principles and basic requirements for system design and implementation”) which means sections detailing scope, normative references, terms and definitions, principles and objectives of food authenticity, and some overall recommendations related to design and implementation of systems and procedures to maintain and verify the authenticity of food products. While the CWA process is the least rigid of the standardization processes, there are still some formal requirements that must be met: • A business plan must be made and evaluated before the proposal for standardization is accepted. • A formal, CEN-advertised and CEN-organized kick-off meeting must be held at the beginning of the process. • The proposed standard must to some degree be structured according to a pre-existing template. • An open hearing process lasting at least 60 days must be publicly announced, and the feedback from the hearing must be used as input to a consensus-based version. • A formal, CEN-advertised and CEN-organized consensus meeting must be held at the end of the process where points of contention, if any, are debated and decided on.