Custom software development for VLOG and GMP+ in the animal feed chain
VLOG stands for Verband Lebensmittel ohne Gentechnik, the German association behind the Ohne Gentechnik (GMO-free) certification mark. Anyone who wants to sell milk, eggs or meat under that label must be able to demonstrate the GMO-free origin of the feed right back to the raw material. That burden of proof lies with feed mills, traders, storage and transport operators, not with the farmer alone.
What the scheme requires
The standard is formally called the Ohne Gentechnik Production and Certification Standard. Version 26.01 was published on 1 September 2025 and has been mandatory since 1 January 2026. It is built up of modules for logistics, feed production, agriculture, food production and retail, plus modules for certification and for group and matrix organisations. This is the chain approach: every link that touches the product has its own module and its own certificate. Traceability and crisis management apply as knock-out requirements.
The European rules run alongside it. Regulations (EC) No 1829/2003 and 1830/2003 govern the authorisation, labelling and traceability of genetically modified food and feed. Labelling is not required where the GMO content does not exceed 0.9 per cent per ingredient and its presence is adventitious or technically unavoidable. The designation on the animal end product is German law: it is tied to feeding periods per species, from six weeks for laying hens to twelve months for beef.
GMP+ covers the safety side. The FSA module consists of Requirements and Technical Specifications. TS1.3 is a product list containing only feed materials assessed and accepted by GMP+ International; TS1.2 contains the gatekeeper protocol for purchasing outside the certified chain. The GMO-free requirement itself sits in MI 5.4 GMO controlled in the FRA module, based on the VLOG standard 26.01.
Compliance in the office depends on what is recorded at receipt and during handling. That is what the page on the app for intake and segregation in the feed chain covers.
How we build this
The evidence lies in the lot and in the carrier, not in a folder of certificates. What you need to be able to show is the route a raw material has taken through your business.
Which certificate, which scope and what validity. A supplier certified for storage is not thereby certified for production.
Receipt, storage location, processing and dispatch are all tied to a single lot number. Traceability in a product recall depends on it.
Which line, which silo, which lorry and what was in it beforehand. Without that sequence, a cleaning procedure cannot be demonstrated.
The number of samples follows from your volume. We record the plan and keep track of what has actually been sampled and by which laboratory.
What the software actually does
Batch administration underpins the whole system. The rest depends on how many links you run yourself and how much you purchase.
Batches from receipt to delivery
Every batch with its origin, storage location, processing and customer. That is the basis on which a recall can be substantiated in a short space of time.
Certificates with scope and validity
For every supplier, the certificate, the scope it covers and its expiry date. An expired certificate should be flagged before the consignment arrives.
Monitoring plan and analyses
The plan, the scheduled samples and what has actually been analysed, with the laboratory alongside. Loose reports in a folder do not amount to monitoring.
Carry-over and cleaning
Lines, silos and transport vehicles, with what was previously in them and which cleaning has been carried out. For GMO-free production, this is the most sensitive point.
Deviations and recalls
A positive result or a complaint starts a procedure with an owner and a deadline. We use the same set-up in software for critical control points.
Integration with ERP and laboratory systems
Weighbridge data, production records and analysis results usually already exist somewhere. We pull in what you have through integrations.
Who we build for
The link you occupy determines what you need to demonstrate. Four scenarios.
Feed mill operators
Recipes, lines and silos where carry-over is the real risk. This is where batch administration and the monitoring plan come together, alongside your broader software for the food industry.
Trading, storage and transport
You handle the product without processing it. If you purchase outside the certified chain, the gatekeeper protocol applies, with a monitoring plan validated in advance.
Cultivation and arable farming
The first link provides the evidence on which everything else rests. For the cultivation side itself, there is crop registration with audit file and agricultural administration.
Additives and premixes
Small quantities with a wide reach. A single premix ends up in many end products, which makes traceability forwards just as important as traceability backwards.
Test your idea first: a working prototype in 1 day
With OneDayBuild, we turn your idea into something tangible in one day for €1,150, so you can see whether further development is worth the investment. Decide to go ahead with the full build? Then we credit the full cost.
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Scheme requirements and versions change. Everything relating to scopes, sampling frequencies, product types and document types should be configurable and not hard-coded.
Why Appfront
The batch is the unit
We build everything around the batch number, from receipt to customer. If you record at product level, you cannot tell which consignment was involved when a result comes back.
A plan, not loose analyses
The number of samples depends on your volume. We record the plan and show the difference between what was scheduled and what has been carried out.
Certificates lapse quietly
We monitor the validity of supplier certificates and the scope they cover. Otherwise this only comes to light during an audit.
We do not certify
Your certificate comes from a certification body and the requirements come from the scheme owner. We build the registration with which you can demonstrate them.
Security and privacy
An animal feed administration contains recipes, supplier terms and analysis results. That is information that could give a competitor or a customer more than you would wish. We set access by role and by site, give a certification body or adviser access only to their own scope, and log every access.
For this topic, it matters that a result cannot be quietly changed after the fact. An analysis updated after a complaint has come in is exactly the wrong evidence during an investigation. We record samples, results and deviations in an unalterable way, with timestamp and person, and any correction is shown as a visible correction alongside the original value. How we handle security ourselves is set out in our information security policy; reports from outside go through our CVD policy.
Frequently asked questions about VLOG and GMP+ in animal feed
Verband Lebensmittel ohne Gentechnik, the German association that manages the Ohne Gentechnik label and publishes the corresponding standard. The standard is called the Ohne Gentechnik Production and Certification Standard and sets out how a business demonstrates that no genetically modified raw materials end up in the product.
Version 26.01. It was published on 1 September 2025 and has been mandatory since 1 January 2026. Check with your certification body which transitional rules apply to your scope, as the standard has separate parts for logistics, animal feed production, agriculture, food production and retail.
The animal feed safety module. It consists of Requirements and Technical Specifications covering, among other things, purchasing, sampling, monitoring, transport, labelling and laboratory testing. The GM-free requirement does not fall under it: that sits in MI 5.4 GMO controlled, which belongs to the other module and is based on the VLOG standard.
A protocol for when you purchase a feed material or service that is not covered by an accepted certification. You take on the role of gatekeeper: you draw up a monitoring plan, have the scheme owner validate it before you apply it, report its use and carry out the associated analyses. The conditions are set out in the technical specification on purchasing.
The scheme's product list. A certified business may only use feed materials that have been assessed and accepted by the scheme owner, and that have been produced according to the associated process description. So you cannot simply buy a raw material that is not on it just because a supplier says it is fine.
The European regulations govern authorisation, labelling and traceability of genetically modified food and feed. Labelling is not required if the proportion of GMO material is no more than 0.9 per cent per ingredient and its presence is adventitious or technically unavoidable. That is a threshold for labelling, not a target: the scheme requires you to show what you have done to prevent it.
No. IFS and BRCGS concern food for human consumption; for those we have separate pages on IFS software and BRCGS software. This page is about animal feed, from raw material to compound feed, and about safeguarding GM-free status throughout that chain.
That depends on how many links in the chain you handle yourself, whether you work with gatekeeping, and whether integrations with your ERP or laboratory are needed. Batch administration with supplier scopes is usually quick to put to use; integrations cost more. We'll give you a reasoned estimate after the discovery phase.
Can you trace a batch back to the raw material?
Take a dispatched batch of compound feed and trace which raw materials it contained, from which supplier, under which scope and with which analysis. If that takes longer than an afternoon, that is the gap. We build this as a standalone application and as part of a broader bespoke software project.