Food Safety

Before the Sector Codes: The Three Standards Everything Else Assumes

By AGS Compliance Team April 19, 2026 1 min read
Before the Sector Codes: The Three Standards Everything Else Assumes

Open almost any sector food standard — meat, dairy, canning, fish — and you will find the same quiet instruction: comply with the general hygiene rules. Those foundation rules are the ones most businesses have never actually read. They govern your floors, your walls, your people and your packaging, and they are where inspectors go first, because findings there invalidate everything built on top.

Premises, People and Packaging

The foundations answer three questions. Where and how may food be produced — siting, the seven sources of contamination, segregation and temperature control across the whole chain, with HACCP covering the full shelf life. What must the building and its people meet — the five required properties of food-contact surfaces, prohibited materials such as galvanised iron, production flow, floors, drainage and personnel hygiene. And what may touch the food — seventeen groups of contact materials governed by the positive-list principle and GMP.

The Verified Source Standards

The pack normalizes GSO 1694:2005 (General Principles of Food Hygiene), UAE.S GSO 21:2021 (Hygienic Regulations for Food Plants and Their Personnel — the foundation establishment standard) and UAE.S/GSO 2231:2012 (materials and articles intended to contact food), on the normative basis of Codex CXC 1-1969. Every substantive source requirement is preserved and paired with the reasoning behind it.

Inside the Pack

Three coordinated foundation documents:

  • General Principles of Food Hygiene (International Edition)
  • Food Plant and Personnel Hygiene (International Edition)
  • Food Contact Materials (International Edition)
  • The five surface properties and the two prohibited materials, explained
  • Seventeen contact-material groups and their GMP requirements

Ready to close the gap? Every AGS pack is delivered as an instant digital download of fully editable Microsoft Word (.docx) files, complete with document control pages, contents tables and defined verbal forms. There is no waiting, no licensing negotiation and no locked PDF: rebrand the files, adapt them to your jurisdiction and your house style, and put them in front of your team the same day. Visit the AGS store and download the pack now — and turn a shelf of scattered standards into one working system.

Product: 07 Food Hygiene Facilities — available as an instant-download, fully editable package from AGS (SKU AGS-04-007).

The toolkit for this guide: International Technical Guidelines Pack - Food Hygiene Foundations & Facilities. Instant download, fully editable, yours to keep.

AGS Compliance Team

Our toolkits and guides are written by practising auditors who assess management systems against ISO, BRCGS, HACCP and Halal schemes. Every document reflects what assessors actually look for.