Exemption from French Sanitary Approval: Thresholds, Distance, Conditions 2026

Between selling to end consumers and full sanitary approval, French regulation provides a middle path that deserves to be better known: the dérogation (exemption) from the approval requirement. It lets a retail food business — butcher, cheesemonger, fishmonger, caterer, restaurant kitchen — supply part of its production of animal-origin foods to other shops, upon simple declaration. On one condition: the activity must remain marginal, local and restricted. Here are the exact thresholds, the distance rule and the procedure.

The principle: retail to retail, locally

The exemption, provided for by the French order of 8 June 2006, is aimed at the operator of a retail shop supplying the animal-origin foods it has produced to other retail establishments. Three ideas structure the scheme:

• Retail to retail: you are a retail business, and your professional customers are too (restaurants, groceries, other food trades). The exemption does not cover supplying wholesalers or platforms.
• Your own products: the exemption covers foods you have produced, not trading.
• An ancillary activity: direct sale to consumers remains your core business; supply to other shops stays marginal.

Typically: the charcutier supplying terrines to two village restaurants, the retail cheese shop delivering to the fine-grocery next door, a restaurant kitchen preparing dishes for the café nearby. If your project is structurally geared towards selling to professionals, this is not the right tool: head for full sanitary approval.

Local: 80 km as the crow flies

Recipient establishments must lie within an 80 km radius of your establishment, measured as the crow flies. The rules allow this distance to be extended up to 200 km in certain situations — notably to account for rural areas with few shops — under conditions to check with your DDPP (the département-level directorate for the protection of populations).

This criterion is often overlooked in favour of the quantity caps — wrongly: delivering to one customer beyond the permitted radius is enough to fall outside the exemption, even for small volumes.

Marginal and restricted: the caps in annexes 3 and 4

The maximum weekly quantities you may transfer are set by annexes 3 and 4 of the order of 8 June 2006, per product category. The mechanism has two tiers: a “full” cap if your transfers stay at or below 30% of your production in the category, and a reduced cap above that share.

Product category	Transfers ≤ 30% of production	Transfers > 30%
Heat-treated milk	800 L / week	250 L / week
Dairy products	250 kg / week	100 kg / week
Fresh meat	800 kg / week	250 kg / week
Meat-based products	250 kg / week	100 kg / week
Fishery products	250 kg / week	100 kg / week
Meals and prepared dishes (annex 4)	1,000 meals / week	400 meals / week

Two important notes. First, this table lists the main categories: the full list and exact definitions are in the order’s annexes — check the line matching your products precisely before building your commercial model on it. Second, certain highly perishable products are excluded from the exemption, minced meat first among them: for those, approval is mandatory from the very first delivery to a professional.

The caps apply per week and per category: a simple weekly log (one table per category, updated with each delivery) is the only way to demonstrate at inspection time that you stay within the framework.

The procedure: a cerfa 13982 declaration, before delivering

Unlike approval, the exemption involves no prior assessment with a visit: it is a declaration, filed with the DDPP (or DDETSPP) of your département using cerfa form no. 13982, before deliveries begin. The department acknowledges receipt after checking the conditions.

The declaration must be renewed upon significant change: the list of regular recipient establishments, the nature of the products transferred or the quantities. And of course, the exemption exempts you from nothing else: your establishment remains subject to general hygiene rules and must keep an up-to-date PMS (plan de maîtrise sanitaire, the French sanitary control plan) — the foundation described on our page on HACCP and the sanitary control plan.

This lightweight declarative regime is consistent with what research on small food businesses shows. The study by C. Yapp and R. Fairman, “Factors affecting food safety compliance within small and medium-sized enterprises”, published in 2006 in Food Control, finds that small structures comply best when requirements are proportionate to their means and supported, rather than one-size-fits-all (see the study). Likewise, the study by I. Violaris, O. Bridges and J. Bridges, “Small businesses – Big risks: Current status and future direction of HACCP in Cyprus” (Food Control, 2008), documents very small firms’ specific difficulties with full food-safety systems (see the study) — the exemption is precisely the French regulatory answer to that reality: enabling local B2B without imposing the full approval machinery from day one.

Exemption or approval: how to decide

Ask yourself four questions:

1. Are my professional customers retail shops within 80 km? If not → approval.
2. Do my weekly volumes per category stay under the caps, factoring in the 30% rule? If not → approval.
3. Are my products eligible (no minced meat or other excluded products)? If not → approval for those products.
4. Will my B2B activity grow? If your ambitions exceed the framework in the medium term, plan ahead: building an approval file takes months — the path is detailed in our guide obtaining sanitary approval step by step.

The worst scenario is silent drift: transfers growing order after order until the caps are durably exceeded, with no one triggering the approval application. At inspection, that overshoot reads as an approval-required activity operated without approval — with the administrative consequences that follow.

Take action

Check your situation in ten minutes: customers, distances, volumes per category, excluded products. Then see our page Sanitary approval of food establishments to place the exemption within the whole scheme — and download the free ebook if full approval is on the horizon.