Food and drug law in Georgia rests on the Law on Food/Feed Safety and Veterinary and Plant Protection — commonly called the food safety code — which unites the spheres of food, veterinary matters, and plant protection. If your business involves producing, importing, or distributing food, or bringing agricultural preparations into the country, this page sets out the core statutory requirements. One boundary should be stated early and plainly: medicinal products for human use are regulated by separate legislation outside this code — so what follows concerns food, animal feed, and preparations of agricultural and veterinary significance.
The purpose and scope of the code
The code aims to protect human life and health, consumer interests, animal health and welfare, and plant health, and to define unified principles of state regulation and an effective system of state control in the spheres of food/feed safety, veterinary medicine, and plant protection. The code applies to the production, processing, and distribution of food/feed, animals, plants, and animal and plant products carried out on the territory of Georgia, as well as to primary production, animal health and welfare, plant health, veterinary preparations, pesticides, and agrochemicals.
A special regime applies at the border: food/feed safety control, veterinary control, and phytosanitary control connected with the movement of goods across the customs border of Georgia — import, re-export, export, and transit — is regulated by this code, the Customs Code, and other relevant normative acts. The code establishes the basic principles and requirements of safety, the types of state control, general traceability requirements across production, processing, and distribution, the competences of authorized bodies, the obligations of business operators, and export and import requirements, together with liability for breaches.
Simplified requirements and family production
The code contemplates simplified requirements, set by government decree, for business operators with small business status who supply primary products directly to final consumers or to a retail point supplying final consumers directly; for those using traditional production methods; and for those carrying out non-factory production in high mountain regions. In addition, state control of food under the code does not extend to production and primary production by a natural person qualifying as a family production subject — although within veterinary and phytosanitary control, the provisions connected with such a subject still apply. This calibration of scope matters when you assess which regime your operation falls under.
Food safety requirements
Food placed on the market must satisfy the food safety requirements defined by Georgian legislation, and placing harmful food on the market is prohibited. Food is considered harmful if it endangers human life and/or health, or is unfit for human consumption. In determining safety, the following must be taken into account: compliance of production, processing, and distribution — including primary production — with statutory requirements; the possibility of use by the final consumer in accordance with the food's intended purpose; any information provided to the consumer to prevent harmful effects, including information on the label; not only possible immediate, short-term, or long-term effects on the consumer but also effects on subsequent generations; possible toxic cumulative effects; and the level of impact on the health of special categories of consumers where the food is intended for them.
An important rule concerns batches: where food is harmful, the entire batch is deemed harmful unless a detailed inspection confirms that the remaining part of the batch satisfies the safety requirements — and the costs of that inspection are borne by the business operator. Note also that formal compliance does not preclude the agency from taking measures to restrict or ban the placing of food on the market, or to withdraw it from the market, where a justified suspicion exists that, despite compliance, the food is not safe.
State registration of veterinary preparations
State registration of veterinary preparations manufactured in or imported into Georgia is carried out by the agency. It is prohibited to produce, import, sell, or use a veterinary preparation that is not registered in Georgia in accordance with the established procedure, save for the exceptions contemplated by the law. Two admission regimes exist: the recognition regime, applied to preparations admitted to the relevant market by a regulatory body of another country or an intergovernmental body defined by the government of Georgia; and the national regime, under which the agency, on the basis of expertise and a registration examination, issues a registration certificate and enters the preparation into the state registry.
Registration of pesticides and agrochemicals
The same logic governs pesticides and agrochemicals: state registration of a pesticide and/or agrochemical manufactured in or imported into Georgia is likewise carried out by the agency, and it is prohibited to produce, import, sell, or use an unregistered product, save for statutory exceptions. An importer or manufacturer must therefore complete registration before placing such products on the market.
Import without registration
The law precisely lists the cases where a veterinary preparation, a pesticide, or an agrochemical may be brought into Georgia without registration:
- for experimental research;
- for registration purposes — in the form of a sample;
- for exhibitions, symposia, conferences, forums, and congresses — in the form of a sample, without the right of sale;
- for re-export;
- for storage in a warehouse/terminal and/or inclusion in a transit cargo operation;
- under special conditions — natural disaster, mass injury of the population, epidemic, epizootic, threat of epizootic, or exotic disease — for humanitarian purposes and where another state interest exists, with the consent of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture;
- where it is an intermediate or undervalued veterinary preparation, a substance and/or raw material used to prepare a veterinary preparation;
- where it is a diagnostic means for use in veterinary medicine.
This list is exhaustive: in any other case, placing an unregistered product into circulation is unlawful. The code separately defines liability for breaches, so treat any step outside this framework as a potential violation when assessing your compliance risk.