The European Hygienic Engineering & Design Group (EHEDG) was founded in 1989 as a non-profit consortium of equipment manufacturers, food producers, suppliers to the food industry, research institutes and universities, public health authorities and governmental organisations.

The principal goal of EHEDG is the promotion of safe food by improving hygienic engineering and design in all aspects of food manufacture.
EHEDG actively supports European legislation, which requires that handling, preparation processing and packaging of food is done hygienically using hygienic machinery and in hygienic premises according to the food hygiene directive, the machinery directive and the food contact materials directive (see EC Directive 2006/42/EC for Machinery, EN 1672-2 and EN ISO 14159 on Hygiene requirements for the design of machinery).
Equipment manufacturers and users are responsible to implement these requirements and EHEDG provides them guidance on the essential hygienic design standards in compliance with national and international legislation.
The EHEDG mission is defined as:
"EHEDG enables safe food production by providing guidance as an authority on hygienic engineering and design".