Rules & Regulations

Food and Drink Safety

You may wish to also look at:

• Food Price Marking

• Licensing Act 2003

Selling or serving food

If you sell or include food as part of your service you must register with your local authority and you must comply with the Food Safety Act 1990 and subsequent regulations. This act covers hygiene, temperature control and labelling and is overseen by the Food Standards Agency which provides a huge amount of information and guidance www.food.gov.uk.

Registration

You will need to register with your local authority environmental health department at least 28 days before starting to serve or sell food or drink. If you change the nature of your food and drink service you will also have to notify the department. Registration is free and simple: contact the environmental health department of your local authority and ask for the form.

Your obligations

Under the act you have four main obligations.

You must avoid:

• Selling, or possessing for sale, food which does not meet food safety requirements. It is against the law to sell unfit food. This includes food which is:
  • rendered injurious to health (see below)
  • unfit (for example it has gone off)
  • is contaminated by outside substances or otherwise
• Rendering food injurious to health. It is an offence to sell or supply food which is 'injurious to health' because of the way it has been treated, or not treated, because of things which have been added to it or taken away, because of the ingredients it contains or any other way in which it might have been rendered harmful. This applies even if you didn't realise the effects of what you were doing - it is your responsibility to know how to prepare, keep and serve food safely.
• Food which is not of the nature, substance or quality demanded. You cannot serve food or drink that is different to that requested by the customer, either because it is the wrong type: eg Darjeeling when they asked for Assam or ham when they asked for bacon or because it is inferior quality to that offered and requested, eg a battery laid egg as opposed to a free-range one.
• Falsely or misleadingly describing, advertising or presenting food. You must take care not to deliberately or indirectly mis-describe the food and drink you offer or give a false impression, either through a description, picture or advertisement or through the way the food is presented.

Complying with the law

Complying with the law is a serious business. Inspectors from environmental health are entitled to visit your business at any time. They can inspect your premises, your staff and your methods, request information in writing or verbally and they can take photographs or remove samples for evidence. If they have cause for concern they will talk to you and give you advice on possible solutions. If you have broken the law they may serve you with an improvement notice. If there is serious concern they could recommend prosecution or even suspend your right to use the premises or equipment.

Complying however, is mostly a matter of common sense and good procedures:

• Basic hygiene - your premises, equipment and work surfaces must be clean and you must have proper routines for keeping them clean at all times. You must make sure waste is properly and securely disposed of, and not allowed to build up. Your premises have good ventilation, lighting and drainage. There must be suitable facilities for hand washing and separate facilities for washing and emptying cleaning tools. Toilets must not open onto food preparation areas. Personal hygiene of staff must be very good.
• A hazard analysis system - just as for health and safety and fire, you need to be able to take a look at your food production process right through from purchasing to storing to preparing to serving and then to clearing up. You should involve staff in this process and train them to look for hazards. You need to be able to demonstrate that you can spot the potential hazards and that you have measures and procedures in place for eliminating or minimising them.
• Training - your staff will need a proper induction into your business to understand your procedures and your hazard analysis. You will need to give them training in food hygiene and all the main areas for complying with the law. You must keep staff training records.

Temperature control

In addition, the Food Safety (Temperature Control Regulations) 1995 require that you maintain effective temperature control when storing and preparing food in order to ensure it stays fit to eat. Food which requires a certain temperature to be fit should be either hot (above 64 degreesC) or chilled (at or below a maximum temperature of 8 degreesC). In addition foods that are likely to support bacterial growth or the formation of toxins must be kept at appropriate temperatures.

Food labelling

Under regulations you must label food that contains genetically modified ingredients. You have two options:
- A general notice such as 'Some items on our menu may contain genetically modified ingredients - please ask for details.' Your staff must then be able to provide accurate information when asked.
- Alternatively you can put specific notices against food items which may contain GM items eg, 'May contain genetically modified soya.'

Legislation

Food Safety Act 1990 (as amended)
Follow this link to view the act from www.opsi.gov.uk.

Guidance for business on European General Food Law Regulations
This gives plain English guidance on the European General Food Law Regulations, with a useful summary for small businesses.

The General Food Regulations 2004 (as amended) These are the revisions to the Food Safety Act 1990 that incorporate the European directives.

Further information and resources

There is a lot of help out there:

www.food.gov.uk
This is the website for the Food Standards Agency (FSA). The FSA can provide you with a helpful pack of information to help you meet all your legal obligations through practical tasks. Their website has a whole host of information and resources, plus interactive tools and training materials and videos.

Safer Food, Better Business
This is the FSA guide for catering businesses. It is available to view online, to download (but it's big) or to order, free, on 0845 606 0667 or email foodstandards@ecgroup.uk.com. Ordered packs come with a useful diary to help you track your management efforts, training and daily routines.

FSA Guidance
This page links to a list of all the FSA guidance - everything from distance selling for food providers to the updated list of commercial names for fish.

Environmental Health Department
Your local authority environmental health department can provide information and guidance.

www.tourismacademy.co.uk/courses
The North East England Tourism Academy is the Centre of Vocational Excellence (CoVE) in inbound and domestic tourism. It is a partnership between Northumberland College, Northumberland Training Agency and the North East Chamber of Commerce.

www.northumbria-larder.co.uk Northumbria Larder is the Regional Food Group. They offer training for food producers. Tel no: 0845 456 2340 enquiries@northumbria-larder.co.uk

More from the Toolkit

See also:

• Food Price Marking
• Licensing Act 2003