Food, feed and veterinary legislation; setting of fees for the performance of controls
In the area of food, feed and veterinary law, the competent authorities carry out official controls in accordance with European and national requirements.
Description
In order to ensure that sufficient financial resources are available to carry out these checks, fees are generally charged for these checks.
In the following areas, mandatory fees are to be charged due to European legal requirements (Art. 79 Regulation (EU) 2017/625):
- Official controls in the field of meat production and processing (in slaughterhouses, cutting plants and game processing plants).
- import controls on foodstuffs
- official controls for the approval of feed establishments
- controls that become necessary as a result of a detected infringement.
In principle, the following factors are to be taken into account when calculating these mandatory fees (Art. 81 Regulation (EU) 2017/625):
- Costs of wages and salaries of staff - including auxiliary and administrative staff - involved in the performance of official controls, as well as costs of social security, retirement benefits and insurance of such staff;
- Costs of furnishings and equipment, including maintenance and insurance costs and other incidental costs;
- Costs of consumables and supplies;
- Costs of services imposed by delegated agencies on competent authorities for official cotrolls delegated to such delegated agencies;
- Costs of training of personnel referred to in subparagraph (a), other than professional training, necessary to attain the qualification required for employment by the competent authorities;
- Costs of travel and related per diem allowances of personnel;
- Costs of sampling and laboratory analysis, testing and diagnosis charged by official laboratories for these tasks.
According to Art 80 of Regulation (EU) 2017/625, in addition to the obligatory fees, Member States may also charge other fees for official controls and other official activities in order to cover costs incurred, unless prohibited by law in individual cases.
No fees shall be charged if
- they are regular inspections which have not led to any complaints or have led to only minor complaints overall, and
- the levying of fees is not prescribed by special legal provisions or because of special monitoring requirements. Such legislation prescribing the levying of fees exists, for example, for inspections in establishments handling meat.
Fees for certain inspections in the area of food, feed and veterinary monitoring must be levied to cover costs. Legal requirements for charging fees are contained in particular in Regulation (EU) 2017/625 as well as the Cost Act and the Cost Schedule (see under "Legal basis").
In addition, the Bavarian State Ministry for the Environment and Consumer Protection has drawn up a guideline (see "Legal basis" ) to assist in the application of the cost schedule. This guideline provides more detailed information on the charging of fees.
- It contains guidelines on how fees are to be set within the framework in accordance with Community law and Bavarian cost law. In this context, the eligible cost components are also listed.
- In addition, the guideline also contains fundamental statements on the obligation to pay costs for inspections in the area of food and feed law and veterinary law.
Status: 14.12.2022
Responsible for editing: Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Umwelt und Verbraucherschutz
- Online transactions, Bavaria-wide
- Online transactions, locally limited
- Prefillable Form, Bavaria-wide
- Legal bases, Bavaria-wide
- Legal bases, locally limited
- Fees, Bavaria-wide
- Fees, locally limited