GTP Good Trading Practice
The main objectives of GTP are transparency, commonality and awareness of responsibilities with regard to food safety and consumer health among operators in agricultural trade in the food and feed chain. The European GTP guide is a modular part of a quality management system covering the whole food and feed chain, where relevant codes of good practices for other activities are the responsibility of operators active in the respective fields.
GTP is one single guide for operators in the European Union with the aim to protect free movement of goods by demolishing potential non-tariff barriers to trade. Its main principles are its voluntary nature and a quality management in accordance with the HACCP principle. In order to ensure independence, verification of compliance and certification are carried out by an independent third party inspection firm accredited under the standards EN 45011 (ISO 65) and/or EN 45012 (ISO 62) with relevant expertise in the food and feed sector. Control Union Certifications is one of these parties.
GTP is maintained by COCERAL, the European association representing trading operators in cereals, oilseeds, pulses, feedingstuffs, agrosupply and derived products
GTP certification
GTP is based on the concept of Community guides to good hygiene practices covering all trading operators in the agrifood and feed sector.
GTP applies to first stage operators trading on the domestic or intra-Community market or importing/exporting to third countries of cereals, oilseeds, pulses, feed materials of vegetable origin and derived products intended for human or animal consumption.
The aim of GTP is to ensure that products are always traded in accordance with good professional practice as defined by COCERAL and the European representative associations. All definitions and procedures comply with EU Regulations EC/178/2002 on Food Safety and EC/852/2004 and EC/183/2005 on agricultural products of plant origin. The scope is limited to compliance with the regulations on food and feed safety, in accordance with the principles established by Codex Alimentarius.
The GTP Guide is maintained by COCERAL. Revisions may be initiated by the European representative associations and on request of the European Commission or Members States within the SCFCAH. Revisions will be proposed to the Community authorities concerned with a view to their official validation.
Inspection and certification
If you wish to be registered under the GTP code, you must comply with the requirements of the European Code of Good Trading Practices. You should include this code in your externally audited scheme. Alternatively, you may offer your customers the opportunity to audit them for verification purposes.
Certification and verification must be carried out by an independent institution which is accredited in an EU Member State. Control Union certifications is such an institution. You can start the certification process by sending a completed application form (available at our website or from any of our local offices) to one of the Control Union offices in your area.
CU shall plan the first inspection visit, and the inspector will arrange an appointment with you. In the event of minor non-compliance of an applicant to the application check list you receive a ?Notice to remedy?. This would enable you to apply for a second verification after having carried out the required improvements. Should the application be refused you would be requested to repeat the complete application procedure. When the application is accepted you become a member of the Scheme and you are entitled to use the relevant logo. You receive a unique identification number which must be used in all relevant documentation and recording procedures.
Once you receive your certification letter from CU, CU will forward a copy of the letter to the national member organisation of COCERAL and a further copy to COCERAL. COCERAL then enters your name in the list of members which will be made publicly available.
The verification and certification procedure has to be repeated every year for the first three years and every second year afterwards.
Standards to test the quality of audit
Control Union Certifications is working according to the requirements of EN 45011 / ISO/IEC Guide 65 ; this international standard guarantees a standardized, objective and reliable way of working of your certification body. We will perform our work based on the GTP regulation from COCERAL and report our findings during and after the inspections in English. When the certification decision is positive, the CU client will receive a certificate mentioning the certified products/services/ processes.
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