IN Brief:
- The Council of the European Union has agreed its position on part of the Omnibus X food and feed safety package.
- The negotiating mandate covers sustainable pesticide use, farm animal records, and plastics used in the food industry.
- The package aims to reduce administrative burden while maintaining food safety, animal health, and environmental protection standards.
The Council of the European Union has agreed its position on part of the Omnibus X legislative package, advancing a food and feed safety simplification agenda that covers sustainable pesticide use, farm animal records, and plastics used in the food industry.
The Council’s mandate will form the basis for negotiations with the European Parliament. The package aims to simplify rules and procedures across plant protection products, biocidal products, feed, official controls, animal health, animal welfare, and food-related plastic use.
Reducing administrative cost while preserving food and feed safety is the central policy balance. For food businesses, the practical value will depend on whether the final rules create clearer obligations that can be built into specifications, supplier approval, audit programmes, testing plans, quality-management systems, and customer documentation.
The Council’s position focuses on three core areas. The first is sustainable use of pesticides, where the package seeks to simplify parts of the regulatory framework while maintaining safeguards around plant protection. The second is record-keeping for farm animals, where existing obligations can overlap with veterinary medicinal product rules and animal health law. The third is the use of plastics in the food industry, a technically important area for processors and packaging suppliers dealing with food-contact materials, compliance documents, and changing material requirements.
The food and feed safety simplification package was proposed by the European Commission in December 2025 as part of a wider effort to streamline EU legislation. The Commission’s food safety simplification work also covers feed additive authorisations, digital labelling options for feed additives, simplified official laboratory accreditation rules, and more pragmatic border controls for plant products.
Food safety systems depend on predictable rules that can be translated into factory controls. When requirements overlap, companies can face duplicate paperwork without stronger assurance. When rules become vague or transitional, compliance work can become harder rather than lighter. The final shape of the package will therefore be judged on whether it removes duplication while keeping traceability and proof of control intact.
Recent import controls show how far compliance requirements can reach across the supply chain. The EU’s restrictions on Brazilian meat and animal-product imports linked to antimicrobial-use rules underlined the importance of animal production records, origin documentation, and supplier verification. The Omnibus X package moves through a different legislative channel, but it sits within the same broader shift toward stronger evidence behind food safety claims and market access.
The plastics element is likely to attract close attention from packaging and processing teams. Food-contact material rules affect packaging specifications, migration testing, declarations of compliance, supplier documentation, reformulation work, and packaging-line validation. Any simplification around plastics used in food applications will need careful implementation because packaging materials are already under pressure from recyclability targets, extended producer responsibility costs, recycled-content debates, and consumer scrutiny.
Food-contact plastics also sit at the intersection of safety and circularity. Manufacturers may want to reduce virgin material use, switch substrates, adopt recycled polymers, or move toward alternative materials, but each change has to preserve food safety, shelf life, machinability, pack integrity, and legal compliance. A simpler regulatory structure could give businesses clearer routes to approval and documentation, although specification reviews and supplier updates are still likely to follow once final text is agreed.
Farm animal records raise a different operational issue. Overlapping requirements can create administrative weight for farmers and upstream suppliers, but animal-health and treatment records remain important for food safety, veterinary compliance, and market access. Reducing duplication will still require processors to maintain confidence that supplier records demonstrate the necessary controls when customers, auditors, or regulators ask for evidence.
The pesticide element will be watched by ingredient buyers and processors exposed to crop-based materials. Residue compliance, import controls, and supplier assurance already affect cereals, fruit, vegetables, oils, spices, and processed ingredients. Simplified procedures may reduce regulatory friction, but manufacturers will still need robust residue monitoring and origin controls where raw materials are exposed to varying agricultural practices.
The Council position is not the final law. The package still has to move through negotiations with the European Parliament before adoption. Food businesses should therefore monitor the developing text, particularly where plastics, animal records, pesticide use, and official controls affect internal procedures or supplier documentation.
The direction is clear enough to justify early attention. The EU wants to reduce unnecessary burden while keeping food safety standards intact. For processors, packaging companies, and suppliers, the practical work will begin when simplification has to be translated into specifications, data systems, audits, and proof that controls remain in place.
