Obtaining French Sanitary Approval in 2026: The DDPP File Step by Step

You have established that your activity requires French sanitary approval — you supply, or are about to supply, foods of animal origin to other businesses. Now you need to obtain it. The procedure is framed by regulation (EC) no. 853/2004 and the French order of 8 June 2006: a file built around your sanitary control plan, an assessment by the DDPP (the département-level directorate for the protection of populations), a visit, and often a conditional-approval period before final approval. Here is the full path, with the points where weeks are won — or lost.

Step 1: confirm the regime and frame the project

Before opening the form, nail down two points. First, confirm that you really need approval rather than the exemption: if you are a retail business supplying limited quantities to other nearby retailers, the exemption from approval may suffice, upon simple declaration. Our article on who needs sanitary approval details the three regimes.

Second, if your premises are not yet fitted out, have the design validated before construction: food, staff and waste flows, clean/dirty separation, forward flow (“marche en avant”), refrigeration capacity. Structural non-conformities are the most expensive to fix afterwards, and some DDPP offices agree to discuss a project upstream. A well-designed plan at the building-permit stage is worth months at assessment time.

Step 2: build the sanitary control plan

The PMS (plan de maîtrise sanitaire, the French sanitary control plan) is the file’s centrepiece — it is what the inspector will read in detail and check against reality. It combines:

1. Good hygiene practices: cleaning and disinfection plan, pest control, cold-chain management, water quality, staff hygiene and training, maintenance.
2. Procedures based on HACCP principles: hazard analysis on your actual production diagrams, critical points, limits, monitoring, corrective actions, verification — the methodology is covered on our page on HACCP and the sanitary control plan.
3. Traceability and non-conformity management: batch identification, supplier and customer links, withdrawal and recall procedures.

The classic trap is the generic control plan — bought or copied — describing an ideal workshop rather than yours. Research on small food businesses confirms it: the study by E. Taylor, “HACCP in small companies: benefit or burden?”, published in 2001 in Food Control, shows that small structures’ main difficulty is not the rigour of HACCP principles but adapting them to the workshop’s reality — a system imposed without team ownership remains a dead document (see the study). So write what you do, do what you write, and train every operator on the procedures that concern them.

Step 3: assemble the cerfa 13983 file

The application’s content is set by the order of 8 June 2006:

• cerfa form no. 13983 (application for sanitary approval of establishments placing products of animal origin, or foods containing them, on the market);
• a presentation note on the company: organisation, activities, product range, forecast volumes, target customers;
• the plans: location plan, site plan, layout of the premises with flows (food, staff, waste, packaging);
• a description of operations: production diagrams, equipment, storage capacity, forecast tonnages;
• the full sanitary control plan.

Worth knowing: the approval application counts as the activity declaration — no need to also send cerfa form no. 13984 (declaration of animal-product handling).

Treat each document as evidence: one requirement, one document, no duplicates or vague cross-references. An incomplete file does not move forward; each exchange with the DDPP adds weeks.

Step 4: file with the DDPP

The file is submitted to the DDPP (or DDETSPP) of the département where the establishment is located, online via the French agriculture ministry’s “Mes démarches” portal or on paper. Filing must happen before the activity requiring approval starts.

The assessment begins with a document review. Respond quickly and precisely to requests for additional information: the file is your first technical exchange with the department that will later inspect you — the quality of this phase builds (or fails to build) trust.

Step 5: the visit and conditional approval

Then comes the inspection visit. The inspector checks that premises and equipment comply and, above all, that the control plan matches observed practice: temperature logs actually kept, cleaning plan executed, staff able to explain the critical points of their workstation.

Two favourable outcomes are possible:

• Final approval if everything is compliant and demonstrated;
• Conditional approval if infrastructure and equipment comply but the system’s operation is still to be proven: it authorises the activity for 3 months. A new visit is then scheduled; where clear but incomplete progress is found, conditional approval can be extended once — its total duration cannot exceed 6 months. At the end, approval either becomes final or is not granted.

The conditional period is no formality: it is an exam on living evidence. Use it to accumulate usable records (monitoring, corrective actions, self-checks) — arriving at the second visit with empty binders is the leading cause of failure at this stage. The missteps that sink applications are catalogued in our article on the mistakes that cost a sanitary approval.

Step 6: after approval — number, oval mark, inspections

Approval takes concrete form as an approval number, which you display on your products inside the oval identification mark (FR, number, CE). It is tied to one site and defined activities: relocation, extension, a new activity or a change of operator must be reported to the DDPP and may require the approval to be updated.

Your establishment then remains subject to periodic inspections, at a frequency adjusted to risk. In case of serious breaches, approval can be suspended or withdrawn — which in practice bars supplying other businesses. Keep the control plan alive: it is both your management tool and your best insurance at inspection time.

Recap: the roadmap

Step	Deliverable	Watch out for
Framing	Regime confirmed, plans validated	Forward flow, circuits
Control plan	Complete and applied	Adapted to YOUR production
File	Cerfa 13983 + documents	Completeness = speed
Filing with DDPP	Acknowledgement of receipt	Before any start
Visit	Compliance demonstrated	Reality = paperwork
Conditional (3-6 months)	Convincing records	Do not let up

Take action

All the keys to the scheme — who is covered, the exemption, inspections, FAQ — are on our page Sanitary approval of food establishments, with a free ebook that walks through building the file week by week. Start with the control plan: it is what makes the approval.