New proposals to better monitor the higiene of the National retailers

At their meeting on Wednesday 18th September, the board of the British Food safety Agency (FSA) considered proposals from the FSA Executive for a phased approach towards a new form of food hygiene regulation for large, national businesses.  The Board heard the results of a trial with five major supermarkets over the past year.     

So far only local inspections every few years

Under the current system, supermarket premises get a planned inspection every few years by their local authority. During the trial, the FSA scrutinised the businesses’ internal food hygiene control systems and saw monthly data from internal and third-party audits on many areas including chilling processes, pest control and cleaning across all stores. Environmental health officers engaged by the FSA carried out some local checks to verify the data.  During the trial, the FSA had access to data from over 10,000 audits, compared with the 1,500 local authority inspections carried out.  During the trial, the FSA was able observe trends in performance across all participating retailers' stores and could identify new opportunities for improvements to food safety systems, alongside the existing inspections of individual premises.   

Additional scrutiny at National level under test

The Board agreed that national level regulation could provide additional scrutiny of the food safety controls in some businesses serving a very large number of customers. It asked that the idea be explored further with extensive engagement and consultation with local authorities, primary authorities, businesses and consumers, as well as discussions with governments across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Board asked to see further detail on next steps at its next meeting in December. The Board did not discuss longer term change, which would require legislation and they agreed to return to this at a later date.