EUROPEAN PRODUCTION

Every campaign co-funded under the European Union’s agricultural promotion policy must carry an EU main message. That message has to refer to Europe in general, to the EU, to the Common Agricultural Policy, to EU legislation, to EU products or to EU production standards, and it must inform about and promote one or more of the specific features of EU agricultural production methods and products — among them food safety, traceability, authenticity and labelling — and of the characteristics of EU agricultural and food products, particularly in terms of their quality, taste, diversity and traditions.

A campaign is expected to focus on one or a few of those features rather than to cover all of them. The features this programme addresses are the European standards of quality and safety, the system of official controls, traceability, and the recognition of the European Union’s quality schemes — and, within those schemes, organic production, which is this programme’s topic.

Source: AGRIP Programme Guide V6.0 (1 January 2026); Grant Agreement, Annex 1, Task 3.1.

European food law applies to all stages of the production, processing and distribution of food, and of feed produced for or fed to food-producing animals. It sets out the general principles and requirements that govern food and feed in the Union and establishes the means to support them.

Within that framework, individual sectors carry their own detailed rules — marketing standards defining product categories and the parameters they are graded by, hygiene requirements, limits on contaminants and residues, and rules on labelling and on the information consumers must be given. A product marketed in the Union has to satisfy the general framework and the specific rules for its sector at the same time.

Source: Regulation (EC) No 178/2002, Article 1.

Compliance with those rules is verified by the Member States’ competent authorities through official controls. The competent authorities must perform official controls on all operators regularly, on a risk basis and with appropriate frequency, taking account of identified risks, the operator’s past record of compliance, the reliability of the operator’s own checks, and any information suggesting non-compliance.

Controls are therefore not a single inspection at one point in the chain: they are a standing obligation on the authorities, applied across production, processing, distribution and import, and their frequency follows the assessed risk rather than a fixed schedule.

Source: Regulation (EU) 2017/625, Article 9(1).

Traceability means the ability to trace and follow a food, a feed, a food-producing animal or a substance intended to be incorporated into a food or feed, through all stages of production, processing and distribution. European law requires that traceability to be established at all of those stages.

The mechanism is an obligation on every business in the chain. Food and feed business operators must be able to identify any person from whom they have been supplied with a food, a feed, a food-producing animal or any such substance; they must have systems and procedures in place to identify the businesses to which their own products have been supplied; and that information must be made available to the competent authorities on demand.

Food and feed placed on the market must also be adequately labelled or identified to facilitate its traceability.

Source: Regulation (EC) No 178/2002, Articles 3(15) and 18.

Alongside the rules that every product must meet, the European Union operates voluntary quality schemes. They identify products and production methods against published criteria, and a product may use a scheme’s name and mark only once compliance has been established and certified.

The schemes cover organic production, under Regulation (EU) 2018/848; and the geographical indications and the traditional speciality guaranteed, under which a protected designation of origin (PDO), a protected geographical indication (PGI) or a traditional speciality guaranteed (TSG) may be registered. Geographical indications protect names of products whose qualities are linked to the area of production; a traditional speciality guaranteed protects a traditional composition or method of production without being linked to a geographical area.

This programme’s topic is the organic scheme, and the recognition of that scheme is one of its measurable objectives. European organic production is described in full on the EU organic production page.

Source: European Commission, Geographical indications and quality schemes explained; Regulation (EU) 2018/848; Regulation (EU) No 1151/2012.