EC identification and health marks

It identifies the processing establishment that produced and packaged the product and that is therefore responsible for its hygiene status.

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.

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).

Where HU is the country code for 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).

Where FR is the country code for 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).