Certain food imported into Australia must be covered by a food safety management certificate. Imported food that require this type of certificate will be listed in the Imported Food Control Order 2019.
See a current list of food requiring this certificate.
The certificate is evidence that a food has been produced through a food safety management system. This system must have appropriate controls in place to manage food safety hazards.
Food safety controls must meet the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) principles. These are set by the Codex Alimentarius Commission.
Read the guidelines to find out how we determine what is a recognised food safety management certificate.
Compliance requirements
When a food requires a certificate, an amendment is made to the Order, and importers will have 24 months to comply.
To import listed food, you must provide:
- a valid third-party certificate, or
- a recognised foreign government certificate.
Make sure you check the requirements for the type of certificate you must provide.
Third-party certificates
A third-party certificate must:
- be issued by an accredited certification body
- be limited to one food producer
- confirm that the food producer’s food safety management system identifies and effectively controls the food safety hazards of concern during primary production and processing of the food
- be able to be validated by us through a web-accessible database administered by the relevant Accreditation Body or Certification Program Owner that accredited the certification body.
Lodging a food safety management certificate
When lodging a Full Import Declaration (FID) in the Integrated Cargo System, select ‘FSMC’ as the ‘Document type’ and enter the certificate numbers as the ‘Document number’.
A valid certificate must be included when lodging through the Cargo Online Lodgement System (COLS).
The certificate must also meet our overarching documentary requirements. These are set out in the Minimum documentary and import declaration requirements policy.
Note: Food safety management certificates are exempt from requiring consignment-specific links.
Food requiring a certificate
We will make a determination about what certificates we recognise for each food listed and provide this on the webpage for each food.
Food which requires a food safety management certificate from 9 November 2022:
Food safety management certificates guideline
Download guideline
Food safety management certificates guideline (PDF 516 KB)
Food safety management certificates guideline (DOCX 1.0 MB)
If you have difficulty accessing these files, visit web accessibility for assistance.