Identification marks and health marks are the oval-shaped markings found on food products of animal origin in the European Community, required by European Union food safety regulations. It identifies the processing establishment that produced and packaged the product and that is therefore responsible for its hygiene status. These marks are meant as a monitoring and tracking aid for food safety and customs inspectors, and each food processing facility dealing with food products of animal origin is required to keep records of its trading partners and their approval numbers (in the case they process said food products), both for buying and selling. The identification and health marks are not an indication for the specific origin of a particular piece of food by themselves, as they do not encode the location of the farm that provided the initial raw product or livestock.

Regulations

The European Union has multiple regulations regarding food safety and quality control in the food industry. These are: The EC/853/2004 regulation defines the identification mark (to identify the last plant or facility which processed the item), and the EC/854/2004 regulation defines the health mark (to identify the slaughterhouse for raw meat or the dairy facility for raw milk, the vet's name being optional). The former is in effect only when there is no need for the latter, though they use essentially the same marking style.

Meaning

The identification and health marks contains the following information in an oval:

Examples

An example of a simple identification mark:

<p style="width: 7em; border-radius: 50%; border: 2px solid black; padding: 0.25em 0; font-weight: bold; text-align: center; line-height: 1.3;"> HU 260 EK Where **HU** is the country code for [Hungary](https://bliptext.com/articles/hungary), **260** is the national approval number of a processing facility (in this case, a dairy facility of the company Alföldi Tej), and **EK** stands for Európai Közösség (European Community in Hungarian). Another example with a more complex national approval number: <p style="width: 7em; border-radius: 50%; border: 2px solid black; padding: 0.25em 0; font-weight: bold; text-align: center; line-height: 1.3;"> FR 49.099.001 CE Where **FR** is the country code for [France](https://bliptext.com/articles/france), ****49**.**099**.**001**** is a complex national approval number, which encodes some geographic data about the facility (**49**: Maine-et-Loire region, **099**: Cholet commune, **001**: facility number), and **CE** stands for Communauté européenne (European Community in French).