Following safe food hygiene practices is not just good practice. It is the law. As a food handler, you need to understand what the law requires of you, and what can happen when it is broken.

This module explains the main food safety laws, how food businesses comply with them, who enforces them, and the powers that enforcement officers have.

Knowing the law helps you understand why each procedure on your site exists. This module covers:

• Food hygiene and the law.
• The key pieces of legislation.
• Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points, or HACCP, and its seven principles.
• Food defence and food fraud.
• Prerequisite programmes.
• Enforcement, legal notices and penalties.
• Due diligence and traceability.

Most UK food hygiene law began as EU regulations, which have been kept in UK law, supported by national legislation. Together, they set standards for food premises, food safety management, the training of food handlers, and temperature control.

Everyone in a food business needs to know how the law affects their work. If a business is prosecuted, not knowing the law is not an acceptable defence.

The main laws you should be aware of are:

• The Food Safety Act 1990, which applies in England, Wales and Scotland.
• Regulation (EC) No 852/2004, on the hygiene of foodstuffs, kept in UK law.
• Regulation (EC) No 178/2002, the General Food Law, kept in UK law, which includes traceability.
• The Food Safety and Hygiene (England) Regulations 2013, and the equivalent regulations in Wales and Scotland.

The Food Safety Act 1990 is the main food law in Great Britain. Under the Act, it is an offence to:

• Make food harmful to health, or sell food that is harmful to health.
• Sell food that does not meet food safety requirements.
• Sell food that is not of the nature, substance or quality the purchaser expects.
• Describe or label food in a way that is false or misleading.

Article 5 of Regulation 852/2004 requires food businesses to have a permanent procedure based on the principles of HACCP, or Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points:

• Conduct a hazard analysis.
• Identify the critical control points, or CCPs.
• Set critical limits for each CCP.
• Establish monitoring procedures.
• Decide on corrective actions.
• Verify that the system works.
• Keep documentation and records.

Manufacturers must also guard against deliberate threats.

• TACCP, or Threat Assessment Critical Control Point, protects against deliberate contamination or tampering, for example by controlling who can access production areas.
• VACCP, or Vulnerability Assessment Critical Control Point, protects against food fraud, such as substituting, diluting or mislabelling ingredients, by assessing weak points in the supply chain.

Report anything suspicious, such as damaged seals or unknown visitors, straight away.

HACCP can only work if the basic conditions for safe food are already in place. These are called prerequisite programmes. They include:

• Buying only from reputable, approved suppliers.
• High standards of personal hygiene.
• Staff training.
• Effective pest control.
• Cleaning and disinfection.
• Maintenance of premises and equipment.
• Waste management.

The Food Standards Agency and, in Scotland, Food Standards Scotland oversee food safety. Local councils employ environmental health officers, and trading standards officers, to enforce the law. They can:

• Enter food premises at any reasonable time to inspect them.
• Investigate complaints and outbreaks of food poisoning.
• Take samples, photographs and other evidence.
• Detain or seize food that is unsafe or unfit.
• Serve legal notices and orders, or take legal action.

If an inspection finds problems, an enforcement officer can issue:

• A hygiene improvement notice, which must give the business at least 14 days to put things right.
• A hygiene emergency prohibition notice, which closes the premises, or stops a process, immediately where there is an imminent risk to health.
• A remedial action notice, used at approved establishments, such as meat, fish and dairy plants, to stop or change a process.

Failing to comply with food law can lead to prosecution in the courts.

In England and Wales, fines can be unlimited, and serious offences can lead to a prison sentence of up to two years. A court can also make a hygiene prohibition order, banning a person from managing a food business. Closure and serious damage to the business’s reputation can follow.

Under the Food Safety Act 1990, the main defence is due diligence: showing that all reasonable precautions were taken, and all due diligence exercised, to avoid the offence.

This depends on documented procedures, accurate records, and full traceability, so that every ingredient, batch and package can be traced one step back to its supplier, and one step forward to its customer.