Legal framework

The goal of the food safety policy of the EU is to ensure safe and nutritious food from healthy animals and plants while supporting the food industry (EC 2014). The integrated Food Safety policy also includes animal welfare and plant health. In the strategy for animal welfare there is an action on the welfare of farmed fish, though there are no specific rules in place (EC 2012). Because of the great variety of potential produce, food safety norms are not explicit for aquaponic produce and there are no specific EU regulations yet (Joly et al. 2015). Aquaponics falls under the common EU policies related to agriculture, fisheries, food safety and the environment. Because aquaponics includes both fish and plant production, different policies apply. Like aquaculture operators, aquaponic producers use a shared primary resource (water) and generate effluents, and their activities are subject to a significant amount of policies and legislation (Hoevenaars et al. 2018; Joly et al. 2015). Table 2 lists the key EU regulations on food safety.

Table 2: Key EU regulations on food safety

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