The dairy sector is one of the most formalized and sensitive areas of the agri-food industry. This stems from the characteristics of the raw material, as well as intense official oversight and an extensive legal regime. At the EU level, the following regulations are particularly important: Regulation (EC) No. 178/2002 (general principles of food law, operator responsibility, and risk response mechanisms), Regulation (EC) No. 852/2004 (hygiene requirements and the obligation to use HACCP-based procedures), Regulation (EC) No. 853/2004 (specific requirements for food of animal origin, including dairy products), and Regulation (EU) 2017/625 (principles for official controls).
In practice, this means that in the event of a food quality or safety incident (e.g. suspected contamination, labelling errors – including allergens, irregularities in test documentation, failure of refrigeration systems, errors in batch traceability), the authorities' interest quickly extends not only to operational staff but also to members of the management board.
For law enforcement authorities, it is crucial to determine whether the enterprise was managed in a way that ensured real risk control.
From the perspective of criminal liability, the mechanism of liability for omission is of central importance. The Penal Code allows for the attribution of liability for a consequence caused by omission only when the person in question had a specific legal obligation to prevent the consequence (Article 2 of the Penal Code). In the context of a dairy company, a board member is sometimes perceived as a guarantor in areas crucial to safety and compliance.
Consequently, the claim to exercise supervision may be insufficient if the supervision was in fact formal and the organisation did not have effective prevention and response tools.
In criminal proceedings, it is verified not only whether safety procedures existed in the plant, but also whether they worked in practice and were updated.
The risks of criminal liability of management board members in the dairy industry are multi-layered.
Firstly, the starting point is sectoral legislation and national regulations on food safety and nutrition, which provide for punitive sanctions for specific infringements (in particular in situations where the product is unsafe, adulterated or placed on the market in breach of the requirements).
Secondly, in practice they also include qualifications from the Penal Code.
In this context, charges under Article 160 of the Penal Code (exposing a person to the immediate danger of loss of life or serious damage to health) are typical – for example, when a widely distributed batch of product objectively poses a serious health risk and the management is accused of failing to respond adequately or tolerating systemic negligence.
There is also liability related to occupational health and safety (Article 220 of the Penal Code) in the background if the organization of work, technical protection or tolerated practices exposed employees to direct danger, which is the case in production plants.
A separate category is constituted by environmental risks (in particular Article 182 of the Penal Code), which are important in the context of sewage management, waste and installation failures.
In food law, document fraud is also particularly significant, as documentation is the primary vehicle for understanding what actually happened at a facility. Depending on the findings, a management board member may be charged under Article 270 of the Penal Code (forgery/alteration of a document or use as an authentic one), Article 271 of the Penal Code (certifying a false statement), Article 272 of the Penal Code (obtaining a false statement by fraud), Article 273 of the Penal Code (using a document certifying a false statement), and Article 276 of the Penal Code (concealing, removing, or destroying a document).
At the same time, in the case of financial and settlement irregularities, it is possible to classify offences arising from the use of invoices (Articles 270a and 271a of the Penal Code), especially when the authority finds that there were unreliable, altered or false invoices in circulation as to the circumstances relevant to public law liabilities.
In situations of liquidity crisis or restructuring, risks may also concern bankruptcy and creditor offences (Articles 300–302 of the Penal Code), i.e. preventing the satisfaction of creditors, acting to the detriment of creditors or unlawfully favouring selected creditors.
The key provision remains Article 296 of the Penal Code, which penalises the abuse of powers or failure to fulfil obligations by a person dealing with the property or business activities of an entity if this results in causing damage (or – in certain variants – exposure to it).
In the dairy industry, typical scenarios include ignoring growing quality risks and non-compliance costs, tolerating shortcuts in the name of volume, neglecting investments in critical areas (hygiene, service, monitoring), and the lack of a viable incident management system.
In practical terms, the line between sufficient supervision and "sham supervision" is usually drawn not at the level of declarations, but at the level of evidence: whether the management has established measurable reporting obligations, escalation thresholds and real decision-making, whether traceability and readiness to recall products have been periodically tested, whether not only documents but also the effectiveness of actions have been audited, whether resources adequate to the risk have been provided.
In the dairy industry, it is organizational efficiency and real supervision, and not general assurances about the supervision exercised, that most often determines whether criminal liability of a management board member becomes a realistic scenario.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice.
Legal status as of March 4, 2026.
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