Overview of certificates and attestations for your food supplements
These are the certificates you need for your successful market access
May 2021. As a distributor, you must ensure at all times that you are only bringing safe products into circulation as you are liable for them. In order to ensure this, we carry out various tests and prepare expert reports for you, which you can also use to document your duty of care as a food company, importer, and distributor.
The food supplement certificates and attestations at a glance
Below, we provide an overview of the types of certificates and attestations that Eurofins, as a specialist in food supplements, can issue to you for your products.
Recipe verification
To ensure that your new product may be launched on the German market in the planned form, we check both the ingredients used and the intended quantities and planned areas of use for conformity on your behalf.
- Check of ingredients for possible use in Germany
- Check of the quantities used for possible maximum quantity limits
- Consideration of the planned area of application or the intended consumer group
- No analyses are carried out
Certificate of marketability
The term "marketability certificate" is used in many different contexts and therefore also covers different services in each case. In Germany, marketability can generally refer to several areas – e.g. to the ingredients used, the health safety of a product (e.g. through residue analysis), compliance with the declared content quantities (prohibition of consumer deception), as well as compliance with labelling regulations. Therefore, we always determine with you individually which form of marketability certificate is ultimately required in each case.
Among others, we declare the possible marketability of the product in the following of our certificates:
- General Certificate of Analysis/Test Report
- Free Sales Certificate (FSC)
- Certificate of Examination
- Labelling test
Free Sales Certificate (FSC)
The FSC is a certificate of general marketability in the form of an official certificate from an expert. The FSC may be required, for example, for the export of food supplement products, due to regulatory requirements or for the release of the product on online sales platforms.
- Check of ingredients for possible use in Germany
- Check of the quantities used for possible maximum quantity limits
- Consideration of the intended area of use or the intended consumer group
- Issuance of a free trade certificate incl. marketability by a publicly appointed and sworn trade chemist with IHK (German Chamber of Industry and Commerce) stamp
- No analyses are carried out
Health Certificate (HC)
Other than the aforementioned FSC, sometimes for the export of your food supplement products to some third countries or for some authority submissions, you need a corresponding health certificate instead, which certifies the health safety of your products and which we can also issue to you.
- Testing of ingredients for possible use in Germany
- Issuance of a health certificate by a publicly appointed and sworn commercial chemist with IHK (German Chamber of Industry and Commerce) stamp
- No analyses are carried out
Certificate of Examination (CoE)
The certificate of examination has been specially designed for the publication of test results in online trade. It shows which chemical and/or physical tests were carried out on the respective product and can be used for advertising purposes to transparently express your high-quality standards to your customers.
With the help of the certificate of examination, you can also obtain approval for your food supplement product from many online sales platforms. For the end-user, the test certificate only shows the tested parameters for easier assessment, but not the analytical values.
- Performance of product-specific residue analyses
- Performance of further analyses (ingredients, additional residues) according to customer-specific requirements
- Issue of a certificate of examination on the basis of the analyses carried out, including marketability, if required also by a publicly appointed and sworn commercial chemist with IHK (German Chamber of Industry and Commerce) stamp
Labelling test
With the help of a label check, you can not only ensure that your product meets all legal requirements regarding the ingredients and quantities used, but also that the product packaging itself complies with the requirements in Germany and does not contain any objections (e.g. unauthorised health claims). We recommend this assurance before the product launch to avoid potentially high additional costs for subsequent changes.
- Checking ingredients for possible use in Germany
- Checking the quantities used for possible maximum quantity limits
- Consideration of the planned area of application or the intended consumer group
- Check of health claims
- Check of text formatting and additional packaging texts for conformity
- Issue of a comprehensive test report
- No analyses are carried out
Eurofins offers both national and international labelling tests for numerous EU member states, as well as for the US, Canadian or Chinese market, among others.
Additional certifications
Particularly in export, the requirements of the various countries can be inconsistent, so that occasionally additional, special certificates must be submitted. These may include the following certificates for example:
- Absence of ionising radiation (irradiation certificate)
- Absence of harmful radioactivity (non-radiation certificate)
- Absence of genetically modified organisms (non-GMO certificate)
We are happy to help you in these cases as well.
When testing your product, we always advise you individually and, together with you, select the form of a certificate that is best suited to your particular requirements.
Get in touch
Would you like to find out more about our testing solutions, or do you need tailored analytical support? Contact us today to get in touch with our experts.
Written by:
Laura Ingenlath
Eurofins NDSC Food Testing Germany GmbH