Details

• Source (FASFC – Starters: what you need to know before starting): https://favv-afsca.be/nl/themas/starters/bij-de-start-van-uw-activiteiten/wat-u-moet-weten-voor-u-opstart
• Source (FASFC – Register and/or change your activities): https://favv-afsca.be/nl/themas/mijn-activiteiten-bij-het-favv/registreer-enof-wijzig-uw-activiteiten-zet-uw-activiteiten-stop
• Source (FASFC – Self-checking): https://favv-afsca.be/nl/themas/controles-door-het-favv-en-interne-controles-door-bedrijven/interne-controles-door-bedrijven/autocontrole
• Source (FASFC – Food labelling): https://favv-afsca.be/nl/themas/voeding/voeding-produceren-en-verkopen/etikettering-van-levensmiddelen
• Source (FPS Public Health – Selling food supplements and fortified foods), source page last updated: 02/07/2026
• Source (FPS Public Health – Labelling, general rules), source page last updated: 12/10/2026
• Source (VLAIO – FASFC food safety): https://www.vlaio.be/nl/begeleiding-advies/vergunningen-getuigschriften/sector-overschrijdende-vergunningen/voedselveiligheid-favv

Who is this for?

For anyone who wants to sell or make something edible: a food truck, a webshop selling granola, a coffee roastery, a catering project, homemade sauces at a market, meals prepared at home and sold through a platform, or a food-supplement brand. It does not matter whether you produce the products yourself or only resell them — as soon as you produce, package, store, transport or market food, you are a “food-chain operator” and must be known to the FASFC.

Two authorities are important:

• The FASFC (Federal Agency for the Safety of the Food Chain) for your activity: registration/authorisation/approval, hygiene, self-checking and traceability.
• The FPS Public Health for certain product categories, especially food supplements and fortified foods — these must be notified separately before you sell them.

Labelling is a shared responsibility of the FPS Public Health and the FPS Economy; the FASFC and the General Directorate for Inspection and Mediation of the FPS Economy take action in the event of infringements.

Part 1 — The step-by-step plan for all food products

Step 1: Register with the CBE

First complete the usual start-up formalities, just like any self-employed person: register in the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises through a business counter (or directly with the CBE). You will receive:

• a company number (CBE)
• an establishment-unit number

You need both for the next step. Please note: your FASFC application does not exempt you from obligations outside the FASFC’s remit — VAT, CBE, NSSO, municipal permits, and so on.

Step 2: Look up your activity code

The FASFC works with codes: PL (place), AC (activity) and PR (product). You must enter these codes on your application form.

• In the FASFC activity list, filter until you find your activity.
• The corresponding activity sheet provides the definition, sector, mandatory and implicit activities, applicable sector guide, documents to attach to your application, and at the bottom the sector in which you will be invoiced for the levy.

Take your time here: the codes determine which regime applies to you and what you will later need to provide.

Step 3: Apply for registration, authorisation or approval

You may not carry out any activity before you have been registered, authorised or approved by the FASFC. Which of the three you need depends on the risk level of your activity:

Some recognisable examples from the hospitality sector: registration is sufficient if you only offer rooms with breakfast, or only sell drinks and/or prepacked food with a shelf life of at least three months at room temperature. All other hospitality businesses need an authorisation. Anyone who prepares meals at home and offers them through an online platform also needs an authorisation.

For certain authorisation activities and for all approval activities, you must submit floor plans of your premises to your Local Control Unit (LCE) for approval in advance.

How do you apply?

• Digitally through My FASFC Operator.
• On paper using the standard application form, completed and sent by post or email to the LCE of the province where your company’s registered office is located.
• Through your business counter, which will arrange it for you.

Registration of activities itself is free of charge (the annual levy is a separate matter — see step 8).

Step 4: Display your certificate (if you sell to consumers)

Do you sell or deliver directly to the final consumer (B2C)? Then you are legally required to display your authorisation or registration in a place that is clearly visible and accessible to consumers, and visible from outside. This also applies to itinerant traders such as market traders; only vending machines are exempt.

Keep the letter from the FASFC that you received together with the poster in your administrative file — you must be able to present it during every inspection.

Step 5: Set up your self-checking system

You are responsible for the safety of what you produce or sell. You must therefore have a self-checking system (SCS) — a legal obligation (Royal Decree of 14/11/2003). Establishments without an SCS are sanctioned, and a valid SCS is a condition for retaining your authorisation or approval.

An SCS consists of:

• good hygiene practices (GHP), and
• a system based on the HACCP principles: identifying hazards, determining critical control points, establishing critical limits, monitoring them, providing corrective measures, verifying everything, and documenting it all in records adapted to the nature and size of your business.

In primary production (growing and breeding), the SCS is based on complying with hygiene requirements and keeping the necessary records.

Are you entitled to flexibilities?

Many small start-ups are. The FASFC makes a distinction.

Do you not handle or process food? Then you can always benefit from the flexibilities:

• If you only trade in prepacked and/or not highly perishable food, applying good hygiene practices is sufficient.
• If you also trade in other food, you may apply a flexible HACCP system.

Do you handle or process food? Then you may apply flexible HACCP if you meet one of these conditions:

1. you only supply the final consumer (B2C), or
2. you also supply B2B, but on a limited basis: no more than 30% of annual turnover within a radius of 80 km (for areas with specific or natural constraints, this radius becomes 200 km), or
3. you supply no more than two establishments that meet condition 1 or 2 and belong to the same operator as you, or
4. you supply other establishments outside those conditions, but only 2 full-time equivalents work at your establishment.

Flexible HACCP means, in practice: hazards, critical points and corrective actions may be predefined in a guide; critical limits may be based on regulatory standards or sensory observations; your registration obligation may be limited to non-conformities (but you must retain all analysis results); HACCP documentation may be replaced by the guide; and records must be kept until 6 months after the use-by date, or at least 6 months if there is no use-by date.

Use a self-checking guide

Sector federations prepare guides approved by the FASFC. They help you develop your SCS and serve as an audit reference. The guides for the B2C sector are free; you can obtain B2B guides through the professional federations. Some commonly used guides:

• G-044 — generic self-checking guide for B2C (all distribution activities)
• G-003 — butcher shops/butchers
• G-007 — retail
• G-023 — hospitality
• G-026 — bakery and pastry shops
• G-034 — production and sale of dairy products on the farm
• G-041 — group childcare for babies and toddlers

You can find them through the generic B2C self-checking guide and the specific tools for each activity sector.

Demonstrate HACCP knowledge

Anyone working with food must be able to demonstrate sufficient HACCP knowledge — for example with a training certificate. The FASFC itself organises training courses, webinars and e-learning, including “I want to start: what do I need to do for the FASFC?”.

Step 6: Arrange traceability and know your notification obligation

Traceability. You must be able to follow the path of a product through all stages of production, processing and distribution: what came in, from whom, what went out, and to whom. In practice: incoming and outgoing registers, lot numbers and delivery notes that you keep. Flexibilities also exist here.

Notification obligation. As soon as you believe — or have reason to believe — that a product you have imported, produced, grown, bred, handled, manufactured or marketed may be harmful to the health of humans, animals or plants, you must inform the FASFC immediately. The FASFC publishes a document called “Notification obligation and notification limits” to determine exactly when the obligation applies, as well as forms for submitting the notification. See Notification obligation.

Step 7: Get your labelling in order

The basis is European Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011. Mandatory particulars must be in the official language or languages of the language area where you sell.

Prepacked food — mandatory on the label:

• name of the food (not your brand name)
• list of ingredients, in descending order of weight
• allergens (the 14 listed in Annex II), clearly emphasised in the ingredients list, for example in bold
• quantitative indication of ingredients (QUID) when an ingredient appears in the name or is depicted
• net quantity
• date of minimum durability (“best before”) or use-by date (“use by” — mandatory for highly perishable products)
• storage conditions and conditions of use
• name or business name and address of the responsible food business operator (if established outside the EU: the importer)
• country of origin or place of provenance where required
• instructions for use where necessary
• alcohol content for drinks above 1.2% by volume
• nutrition declaration
• the lot, preceded by the letter “L” (Royal Decree of 09/02/1990), unless the date includes at least the day and month

Readability: at least 1.2 mm for the letter “x”; 0.9 mm on packaging whose largest surface is less than 80 cm². On packaging under 10 cm², the name, allergens, net quantity and date are sufficient.

Non-prepacked food (sold loose, packaged at the customer’s request, or packaged for immediate sale): only allergens are mandatory, under the Royal Decree of 17/07/2014. Additional flexibilities exist for small producers and local retailers; the FPS Public Health, the FPS Economy and the FASFC have jointly explained the concepts of “immediate sale”, “small quantities” and “local retail” in an explanatory document and a Q&A.

Online sales: all mandatory information — except the dates and lot number — must be available free of charge before the purchase is completed, and must be supplied again on delivery.

Claims. Nutrition and health claims (“rich in calcium”, “good for your memory”) are only permitted if they comply with Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006. The European Commission also has a Food Labelling Information System where you can look up labelling requirements by product type; the FASFC links to it on its labelling page.

Step 8: Take the FASFC levy into account

Registration itself is free, but as soon as you carry out activities subject to a levy, you owe the annual flat-rate levy. Good to know:

• The amount is calculated solely on your economically most important activity subject to the levy. Secondary activities do not cost extra.
• The amount is indexed annually and depends on your sector, production capacity and number of employees.
• The levy is due per calendar year, regardless of how long you were active that year. If you start in November, you owe the full levy for that year. The same applies if you stop during the year.
• The Financing Department sends you an invitation every year to declare your activities; the campaign starts at the beginning of March.
• In addition, fees may be charged: follow-up inspections after a warning or official report, issuing export certificates, and audits on request.

Current rates and the brochure can be found at FASFC financing: Levy.

Step 9: Consider validating your SCS (smiley and 75% discount)

Having an SCS is mandatory; having it validated and certified is not. But it provides three concrete benefits if your SCS is validated for all your activities:

• 75% discount on the annual FASFC levy
• less frequent inspections by the FASFC
• for B2C activities: the smiley, a sticker with a unique number that you put on your window

Validation is carried out by an independent certification body (OCI) recognised by the FASFC, based on an approved guide. If there is no approved guide for your sector, only the FASFC can audit you — this does provide the discount and lower inspection frequency, but no certificate and no smiley. The audit is chargeable (the OCI determines the amount; each guide specifies a minimum number of audit hours), while obtaining the smiley itself costs nothing extra. The smiley is valid for 3 years and remains the property of the FASFC.

Smileys are reserved for B2C: hospitality, large kitchens, butchers, bakeries, retail, childcare for babies and toddlers, and farm dairy production.

So do the maths: if your levy is substantial, the audit cost may pay for itself. For a small start-up with a low levy, usually not immediately — in that case, the smiley is mainly a commercial argument. See Smiley.

Step 10: Prepare for the inspection

The FASFC works with inspection checklists that are publicly available on its website. Search for the title of the activity you declared (see your activity sheet) and you will know exactly what will be checked. There are also free brochures, including “The road to a flawless FASFC inspection” (B2C) and “Processing and sales on the farm”, both also available as e-learning.

Part 2 — Additional steps for food supplements and fortified foods

Do you sell or produce food supplements (pre-dosed products: capsules, tablets, dropper bottles, containing nutrients, plants or other substances with a nutritional or physiological effect) or fortified foods (ordinary food to which vitamins or minerals have been added — breakfast cereals, fruit juices, vegetarian products)? Then the steps below come on top of everything in part 1.

A. Check whether your ingredients are permitted

Three Belgian royal decrees regulate what you may add, in addition to European Directive 2002/46/EC and Regulation (EC) No 1925/2006:

• Nutrients — vitamins, minerals, essential amino acids and fatty acids: Royal Decree of 30 May 2021, implemented by the Ministerial Decree of 4 March 2022. Among other things, it sets the minimum and maximum daily quantities.
• Plants — the “Plants Decree”, Royal Decree of 31 August 2021. Belgium works with three lists: plants that may not be eaten (wisteria, foxglove), edible mushrooms, and plants that are permitted subject to conditions of use (such as valerian). Derogations are possible after advice from the Advisory Commission for Plant Preparations.
• Other substances — Royal Decree of 29 August 2021, with additional rules for, among others, carnitine and caffeine.

Also pay attention to two statuses that can derail your project: novel food (an ingredient without a significant history of consumption in the EU before 15 May 1997 requires European authorisation) and medicinal product status. For certain plant parts, you must add evidence to your notification dossier showing that the ingredient does not fall under novel-food legislation.

B. Submit your notification dossier — before you sell

Before food supplements or fortified foods are placed on the market, you must submit a notification dossier to the FPS Public Health. This is done through the online FOODSUP application; a paper version remains possible through a separate procedure.

Your dossier must contain at least:

• the ingredients list — for supplements: all ingredients and their quantities; for fortified foods: the added nutrients and any prohibited plants
• if applicable, a nutritional analysis
• information about the active substances and their safety
• the final version of the label as it will appear on the market
• the undertaking to carry out product analyses at regular intervals

After processing, you will receive a reply letter containing either a notification number NUT, PL and/or AS (no serious infringement identified), or one of the following codes: a (outside the scope of this legislation), b (incomplete dossier) or d (serious infringement identified).

If you sell a product that is not compliant in Belgium but is legal in another Member State, you can request mutual recognition by submitting a completed declaration with your notification dossier: product information and the relevant legislation of that country, proof that the product was sold there on a specific date (identifying the product, suppliers and customers), and a reference to or statement about that legislation.

C. Additional labelling rules

On top of all the particulars in step 7:

• the designation “food supplement”
• the reference intakes (RI)
• warnings: do not exceed the recommended daily dose; keep out of reach of children
• a statement that the product is not a substitute for a varied diet
• the amount of active substances per serving
• for plants: the name in the local language and the scientific name

Prohibited in advertising and on the label:

• claiming that the product can prevent, treat or cure diseases or symptoms
• claiming that a balanced and varied diet does not provide enough nutrients

Health claims are subject to Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006. For claims that are still “on hold” — especially claims about plants — the indicative list of statements that are not considered therapeutic or prophylactic still applies.

D. Nutrivigilance

As an operator, you are obliged to report every adverse effect of your product. Healthcare professionals and citizens may do so voluntarily.

Contact: Food Supplements Unit, apf.sup@health.fgov.be, 02 524 73 00 (mornings only, subject to availability).

Checklist

For all food products

Additional checklist for food supplements and fortified foods

Common mistakes made by start-ups

• Starting to sell before the FASFC application has been completed. A pop-up or a first market day already counts. The application must be submitted in advance.
• Assuming that registration is sufficient. As soon as you prepare or process food, you usually need an authorisation. Check your activity sheet.
• No written SCS. An SCS “in your head” does not count for an inspector. Even under the flexible regime, you must record non-conformities and analysis results.
• Creating the label only at the end. For supplements, the final label belongs in the notification dossier — design it before planning your production.
• Copying health claims from abroad. What a foreign supplier puts on its website is not automatically permitted in Belgium.
• Forgetting the levy when starting in December. It is due per calendar year, regardless of how long you were active.

Useful links

• FASFC – Starters — the complete start-up section, with e-learning
• FASFC – My FASFC Operator — declare and change your activities digitally
• FASFC – Activity list and activity sheets
• FASFC – Conditions for benefiting from the flexibilities — with summary table
• FASFC – Generic B2C self-checking guide (G-044) — free
• FASFC – Smiley
• FASFC – Training
• FASFC – Contact and local control units
• FPS Public Health – Selling food supplements and fortified foods
• FPS Public Health – Plants in food supplements
• FPS Public Health – Vitamins and minerals in food supplements and fortified foods
• VLAIO – Starting a food truck: how do you go about it? (in Dutch)
• VLAIO – Itinerant activities: what changes from 1 April 2024? (in Dutch)
• FPS Public Health – Labelling: general rules and mandatory particulars

Related in this knowledge base: Foodies Arena (FASFC-compliant kitchens in Ghent, Eedverbondkaai 242) · Information obligations for webshops · Drawing up general terms and conditions