What are the dangers around food?
Food must not be placed on the market if it is unsafe, injurious to health or unfit for human consumption.
Food standards are in place to remove or ameliorate the harm that unregulated food(s) can cause.
Risks include: microbiological, chemical, physical, radiological or allergen contamination that could render the food unsafe for human consumption.
Good standards of food safety are necessary to prevent: food poisoning, food spoilage, food contamination, allergic reactions, loss of productivity, pest infestations. This process involves prosecution for contravention of food safety legislation and the closure of catering operations by enforcement authorities.
Without appropriate food standards regulations there is the potential for consumers to be misled, for example on the composition or nutritional quality of foods.
The Food Standards Agency was established in 1999..
Legislative and regulatory frameworks
Food Safety Act 1990
Under the Food Safety Act 1990 a food business must not: cause food to be dangerous to health, sell food that is not what the customer is entitled to expect in terms of content or quality, and describe or present food in a way that is false or misleading.
This Act provides the framework for all food legislation in England, Wales and Scotland. The equivalent legislation in Northern Ireland is The Food Safety Order 1991.
Food Information Regulations 2014
Food Information Regulations 2014 provide details on the information which must be provided to consumers and how the information must be presented. It also confirms the 14 substances or products that cause allergies or intolerances.
Other Acts/regulations
• The Food Safety and Hygiene (England) Regulations 2013;
• The Food Hygiene (Scotland) Regulations 2006 (as amended);
• The Food Hygiene (Wales) Regulations 2006; and
• The Food Hygiene Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2006.
These regulations make it a requirement for all food businesses to implement food safety management procedures based on Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) techniques. A HACCP plan is designed to keep food safe from biological, chemical and physical food safety hazards. To make a plan, it is necessary to:
• Identify any hazards that must be avoided, removed or reduced
• Identify the critical control points (CCPs) – the points when at which it is necessary to prevent, remove or reduce a hazard in the food process
• Set limits for the CCPs
• Make sure you monitor the CCPs
• Put things right if there is a problem with a CCP
• Put checks in place to make sure your plan is working
• Keep records
Food businesses are also awarded a food hygiene rating.
Food standard enforcement
The Food Standards Act 1999 established the ‘Food Standards Agency’ (FSA) and set out its goal to protect public health in relation to food, giving it power ‘to act in the consumer’s interest at any stage in the food production and supply chain’.
The agency took over a number of functions formerly carried out by the Department of Health and the Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (now DEFRA). This was done following a series of food safety scares in the 1990s which undermined trust in the then Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.
Created in 2000, the Food Standards Agency has the main statutory objective to ‘protect public health from risks that may arise in connection with the consumption of food (including risks caused by the way in which it is produced or supplied), and otherwise to protect the interests of consumers in all matters connected with food’. It is responsible for food safety and food hygiene in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It t is a non-ministerial department and is accountable to Parliament through the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. Scotland has its own agency:’ Food Standards Scotland’.
All the Food Standard Agency’s policy responsibilities are related to food. The main ones are: Food Safety, Food Hygiene, Feed Safety, Animal Welfare Enforcement, Labelling and Allergens, Food Crime, Antimicrobial resistance (AMR), Food Surveillance and Scientific Advice.
Food standards post Brexit
One of the most controversial topics of the Brexit transition was the question of how the UK’s food and agriculture standards, strictly regulated by Brussels when the UK was an EU member, could change after Brexit.
Farmers were concerned that lower-standard imports would undercut British produce, while they were expected to maintain high standards to be able to export to the European Union. In response, ministers explicitly ruled out imports of chlorinated chicken and hormone-treated beef.
Campaigners worried that, although the UK government has vowed to maintain food safety standards, its negotiating approach in the pursuit of trade deals effectively might lead to the revision of those standards in favour of deregulation.
In preparation for Brexit, the Food Standard Agency maintained: ‘Leaving the EU has not changed our top priority which is to ensure that UK food remains safe and what it says it is’.
From 1 January 2021, food imports from non-EU countries into Britain are registered using DEFRA’s ‘Import of Products, Animals, Food and Feed System’ (IPAFFs). According to the FSA, ‘No new food safety risks from EU food imports were identified in the period immediately after 1 January.’.
Writing in March 2021, the FSA re-affirmed, ‘Throughout the progression of the EU Exit and transition work, the FSA’s approach has been, and remains, firmly framed around ensuring that public health protection and consumers’ interests are put first’.
The implementation of the NI Protocol means that EU food and feed law continues to apply in respect of Northern Ireland while mainland Britain now designs its own regulations.
Statistics
Before Brexit, 95% of food and feed law in the UK was actually EU law. It all needed to be repatriated.
The Food Standards Agency estimates that about 2.4 million cases of food-borne illness occur every year in the UK.
Researchers writing in the British Medical Journal have estimated there are 180 deaths per year in the United Kingdom caused by food borne diseases from 11 pathogens. Campylobacter, Clostridium perfringens, Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella and norovirus are responsible for 98 percent of the 180 deaths but it is not possible to rank the five pathogens. Total deaths could be as low as 113 or as high as 359.
Quotes
“There is a sort of thing about as, if American food was somehow inferior”… “I look at the Americans, they look pretty well nourished to me. And I don’t hear any of these critics of American food coming back from the United States and complaining … So let’s take some of the paranoia out of this argument.” – Boris Johnson, speech to the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, February 2020
