Incident and Crisis Management under EFISC-GTP: From Operational Response to Strategic Resilience

In today’s feed and food ingredient manufacturing industry, product safety is no longer solely a matter of compliance with production technology. The globalization of supply chains means that a local failure at a single facility can trigger a systemic crisis on an international scale. The EFISC-GTP standard places special emphasis on Incident and Crisis Management procedures, treating them as a critical safeguard for the entire “farm to fork” chain.
The main objective of a crisis management system is not merely to “correct an error,” but to provide demonstrable assurance of product safety. For a certified company, having a clear action algorithm for emergency situations means:

• Right to market access: In today’s environment, verified safety is a mandatory condition for access to international markets.
• Reputation protection: Transparent actions during an incident minimize the risk of losing trust among consumers and regulators.
• Loss reduction: The speed of identifying and isolating an affected batch directly impacts the financial losses associated with a product recall.

The EFISC-GTP standard requires operators not to passively wait, but to actively control the situation. Key areas of focus include:

• Event classification: The company must clearly distinguish between an incident — an isolated event with low media risk — and a crisis, meaning a situation that threatens the reputation of the entire EFISC-GTP system or public health.
• Product control: A crucial factor is determining the status of the product — whether it remains under the operator’s full control or has already entered the distribution network. This determines the severity and scale of the procedures to be launched.
• Compliance with timeframes: The standard establishes a strict deadline: the certification body and the EFISC-GTP Secretariat must be notified within 24 hours from the moment a suspicion of product unsafety is identified.
• Evidence base: Any decision on safety must be based on verified data, such as test results from accredited laboratories, and their comparison with EU legislative limits or national law.

The system is based on a strict decision tree. The company must assess the situation according to the following criteria:

• Has chemical, biological, or physical contamination been identified?
• Have legally established limits, such as MRLs, been exceeded?
• Is there a potential threat to human or animal health?

If the answer to these questions is positive, the product is deemed unsafe, and the company must immediately proceed with the notification and recall procedure.
During regular audits, verification of the incident management block is mandatory. The auditor focuses on the following aspects:

• Availability and relevance of procedures: The auditor checks whether a recall procedure has been implemented at the facility and whether it complies with the current version of EFISC-GTP — currently Version 2.0.
• Real cases and notifications: The auditor checks whether any incidents have occurred since the previous audit. If an incident took place, the auditor verifies whether the certification body and EFISC-GTP were notified within 24 hours. Importantly, concealing an incident constitutes a critical nonconformity and leads to certificate withdrawal.
• Corrective actions: Reports on previous incidents are analyzed. The auditor assesses whether the root cause was identified and how effective the measures taken to prevent recurrence were.
• Special audits: In the event of serious crises, the certification body has the right to conduct an unannounced or special audit at short notice to assess changes in the company’s safety system.

Incident management within the EFISC-GTP system is not a formal bureaucratic obligation, but a tool of collective safety. Transparency and speed of interaction between the operator, auditor, and scheme owner make it possible to localize threats before they become fatal for the business and the industry as a whole.