STANAG 2556 NATO food safety, defence and production agreement

What it is

STANAG 2556 is the NATO Standardization Agreement for "food safety, defence, and production in support of NATO operations." This is Edition 3, promulgated 4 July 2022, and it supersedes "STANAG 2556, Edition 2, dated 29 March 2019."

A STANAG is not the specification

A STANAG is the agreement by which NATO nations commit to implement a standard, not the technical specification itself. STANAG 2556's own text is short and administrative: an aim, an agreement covering five publications, and the ratification, implementation, review and reporting machinery. The technical content sits entirely in the five Allied Medical Publications it names: "Participating nations agree to implement the following standards": AMedP-4.5 Edition B, AMedP-4.6 Edition B, AMedP-4.7 Edition B, AMedP-4.12 Edition A, and AMedP-4.14 Edition A. Anyone actually auditing a food contractor, inspecting a catering facility, or running a naval food operation needs the AMedP itself, not this cover agreement.

What the agreement covers

The cover lists its aim as responding to a set of interoperability requirements: a standardized approach "to ensure the quality of food processors and food suppliers during all field operations"; a standardized approach "to food defence for both food producers and suppliers"; "a standardized template for audit reports for both food suppliers and food producers"; "standardized guidance on food production standards for contracted and military food services producers"; "minimum requirements for food production facilities in terms of safety, sanitation and food quality"; and "a comparable standardized approach between land and naval operations."

Five publications carry that substance, each with its own record:

• [AMedP-4.5](/standards/amedp-4-5) (Edition B) covers audit principles and risk assessment of food processors and suppliers.
• [AMedP-4.6](/standards/amedp-4-6) (Edition B) covers food safety, defence and production standards in deployed operations.
• [AMedP-4.7](/standards/amedp-4-7) (Edition B) covers inspection of food services catering facilities in deployed operations.
• [AMedP-4.12](/standards/amedp-4-12) (Edition A) covers food and water defence.
• [AMedP-4.14](/standards/amedp-4-14) (Edition A) covers food and water safety, defence and production in NATO naval operations.

None of their individual requirements are reproduced here; the substance lives in each of those five records.

The cover also names two other related documents outside the agreement itself: STANAG 2136, on water potability during field operations and in emergency situations, and AMedP-4.9.

Who it binds, and how

STANAG 2556 binds nations, not suppliers. A nation is bound through ratification, recorded in the NATO Standardization Document Database (NSDD), and implementation is a separate, later step: the STANAG "is implemented when a nation has issued the necessary orders or instructions to authorities and units concerned putting the requirements detailed in this agreement into effect." For AMedP-4.5, -4.6, -4.7 and -4.12, that means a nation has updated its procedures for auditing food contractors, food supply and production in the field, and catering-facility inspection, "in order to provide healthy and safe food for deployed soldiers in the field." For AMedP-4.14, it means a nation with navy units has updated its feeding and water-supply procedures "in order to achieve a high level of control over foodborne and waterborne health risks on board of vessels." Which national body carries which duty is left to each nation's own "governmental and military structures." A food producer, supplier or contract caterer meets STANAG 2556, or the AMedPs it covers, only where a contract or tender says so - the cover's own "NATO Effective Date (NED)" field reads "Not applicable," so there is no blanket start date to point to.

Reviews of the STANAG itself run under AAP-03, with the result recorded in the NSDD. It is supervised, per its tasking authority clause, under COMEDS, MCMedSB (the military medical standardization board), MedStd, FHP and FWSVS P.

How it's evaluated

STANAG 2556 describes no certification scheme for a supplier, a producer or a caterer, and the document never uses that language. What it describes is national auditing: the cover calls for "a standardized template for audit reports for both food suppliers and food producers" and for nations to "install standardized auditing of food contractors for field supply." That is a national or military customer auditing its own contractors against the AMedPs it has adopted, not a third party certifying an organisation. Ratification and implementation status are reported separately to NATO through the NSDD and the electronic reporting tool - government-to-NATO reporting, not an assessment of a supplier.

Standards it references

• STANAG 2136Background
• AMedP-4.9Background