Food, Drink & Hospitality UK-wide

Get your animal-origin establishment approved: meat, poultry, fish and dairy

If you make products of animal origin — meat, poultry, fish, shellfish or dairy — you need establishment approval before you trade, not just food business registration. This guide takes you through getting each establishment approved, meeting animal-welfare competence at slaughter, handling animal by-products, and embedding product-specific safety controls.

Guide summary

You must get approval for each establishment before you trade if you handle meat, poultry, fish, shellfish or dairy. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) approves slaughterhouses and cutting plants, while your local authority approves dairy and fishery premises. Each approved site gets a unique number you must show on your products. You also need animal welfare certificates for staff who slaughter animals.

  • Get each establishment approved before you start to trade
  • Apply to the FSA for slaughterhouses and cutting plants
  • Apply to your local authority for dairy, fish and meat products
  • Display your unique approval number on product labels
  • Meet animal welfare rules if you slaughter: staff need a Certificate of Competence
  • Staff need a separate certificate for each species they handle
  • Handle animal by-products correctly under separate rules
  • Build product-specific safety controls into your food safety plan
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If your business handles products of animal origin — fresh and processed meat, poultry, fish, shellfish or dairy — registering as a food business is not enough. You must get each establishment approved before you start to trade. Approval confirms that your premises, processes and food safety management meet the higher hygiene standards that apply to animal-origin products.

Approval is granted by different bodies depending on what you make. In England, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) approves slaughterhouses, cutting plants and poultry establishments, while your local authority approves meat-products, dairy and fishery-products establishments. In Scotland, Food Standards Scotland approves and audits all approved establishments. In Wales and Northern Ireland the same split applies under their own regulations — the FSA approves slaughterhouses, cutting plants and poultry establishments, and the local authority approves meat-products, dairy and fishery-products establishments. Each approved establishment is given its own unique approval number, which must appear on the identification mark on your products.

This guide takes you through the four things you need to get right: securing establishment approval, meeting animal-welfare competence if you slaughter, handling animal by-products correctly, and building product-specific safety controls into your food safety management.

A. Get your establishment approved

Approval is the gateway obligation for animal-origin businesses. The snippet below explains the split between FSA-approved and local-authority-approved establishments, how to apply, and how the unique approval number works.

B. Meet animal-welfare competence at slaughter

If you slaughter animals or kill poultry, the people doing the work need a Certificate of Competence under welfare-at-killing rules, with separate certificates for different species. In England these duties sit under the Welfare of Animals at the Time of Killing (England) Regulations 2015; in Scotland under the equivalent 2012 Regulations; and in Wales and Northern Ireland under their own equivalent regulations. The snippet sets out which certificates you need and how to get them.

C. Handle animal by-products correctly

Producing meat, poultry or other animal-origin food generates animal by-products — the parts not intended for human consumption. You must register the relevant premises and handle, store and dispose of by-products by their correct category. The Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) enforces this across Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales), and DAERA does so in Northern Ireland. The snippet explains registration and the handling rules.

D. Meet product-specific safety controls

Animal-origin products carry hazards that need specific controls. The snippet below covers four of them in one place: heat treatment of raw drinking milk, parasite control by freezing for fishery products, temperature control for chilled ready meals, and pasteurisation of ice-cream mix. You must build the controls that apply to your products into your HACCP-based food safety management plan.

  1. 1

    1. Register as a food business

    Register with your local authority (or Food Standards Scotland) at least 28 days before trading. Registration is the baseline; approval comes on top of it.

  2. 2

    2. Identify whether the FSA or your local authority approves your establishment

    Slaughterhouses, cutting plants and poultry establishments are FSA-approved (Food Standards Scotland in Scotland). Meat-products, dairy and fishery-products establishments are approved by your local authority.

  3. 3

    3. Apply for establishment approval

    Submit your application with your premises layout, processes and food safety management plan. You can only trade in approved products once approval — and your unique approval number — is granted.

  4. 4

    4. Secure WATOK Certificates of Competence (if you slaughter)

    Make sure everyone carrying out slaughter or killing holds the correct Certificate of Competence for each species before any animals are killed.

  5. 5

    5. Register your animal by-products with APHA

    Register the relevant premises and set up correct categorisation, handling, storage and disposal for the by-products your process generates.

  6. 6

    6. Embed the product-specific controls in your HACCP plan

    Build raw-milk heat treatment, fish parasite freezing, chilled ready-meal temperature control and ice-cream pasteurisation into your food safety management, as relevant to your products.

What to do next

Establishment approval sits within the wider set of obligations every food manufacturer must meet. Use the universal safe-food spine guide to see how approval fits alongside registration, hygiene, allergens, labelling and traceability, then run the compliance checklist to confirm nothing is missing before you trade.

Official sources

Authoritative guidance on establishment approval, animal by-products and animal-origin food controls.