Food, feed and veterinary law; setting fees for the performance of inspections

In order to ensure that sufficient financial resources are available to carry out these checks, fees are generally charged for these checks.

Mandatory fees must be charged in the following areas due to European legal requirements (Art. 79 Regulation (EU) 2017/625):

• Official controls in the area of meat production and processing (in slaughterhouses, cutting plants and game processing plants)
• Import controls for foodstuffs
• Official controls for the approval of feed businesses
• Controls that become necessary as a result of a detected infringement.

In principle, the following factors must be taken into account when calculating these mandatory fees (Art. 81 Regulation (EU) 2017/625)

• Costs for wages and salaries of staff - including auxiliary and administrative staff - involved in the performance of official controls, as well as costs for social security, retirement benefits and insurance of such staff;
• Costs of furniture and equipment, including maintenance and insurance costs and other ancillary costs;
• costs of consumables and supplies;
• costs of services imposed by delegated bodies on competent authorities for official functions delegated to those delegated bodies;
• costs of training of staff referred to in point (a), with the exception of vocational training necessary to obtain the qualification required for recruitment by the competent authorities;
• costs of travel and related daily allowances of staff;
• costs of sampling, laboratory analysis, testing and diagnosis charged by official laboratories for these tasks.

In accordance with Art. 80 of Regulation (EU) 2017/625, Member States may levy fees for official controls and other official activities in addition to the mandatory fees in order to cover costs incurred, unless this is prohibited by law in individual cases.

No fees are charged if

• these are regular checks that have not led to any complaints or only minor complaints overall and
• the charging of fees is not prescribed in special legal regulations or due to a special need for monitoring. Such legal provisions that prescribe the levying of fees exist, for example, for inspections in establishments that handle meat.

Fees for certain inspections in the area of food, feed and veterinary monitoring must be charged to cover costs. Legal requirements for the charging of fees are contained in particular in Regulation (EU) 2017/625 as well as the Cost Act and the Schedule of Costs (see "Legal bases").

The Bavarian State Ministry of the Environment and Consumer Protection has also drawn up guidelines to assist with the application of the schedule of costs (see "Legal bases" ). This guideline contains more detailed specifications regarding the charging of fees.

• It sets out how the fees are to be set within the framework in accordance with Community law and Bavarian cost law. In this context, the eligible cost components are also listed.
• In addition, the guide also contains basic explanations on the obligation to pay costs for inspections in the area of food and feed and veterinary law.