Following safe food hygiene practices is not just good practice. It is a legal requirement.

As a food handler, you need to know what the law requires of you, and what can happen if it is not followed. In this module, you will learn about the main food safety laws, food safety management systems, who enforces the law, the notices and orders they can use, and the importance of keeping good records.

Most food safety law in the UK began as European Union regulations, which were kept in UK law after Brexit, supported by UK legislation.

Together they set standards for:

• Food premises and equipment.
• Food safety management.
• The training and supervision of food handlers.
• Temperature control.

If a business is prosecuted, not knowing the law is no defence.

• Regulation (EC) 852/2004, on the hygiene of foodstuffs, sets hygiene standards for premises, equipment and food handlers, including training. It also requires food businesses to be registered, and to run a food safety management system.
• Regulation (EC) 178/2002, known as General Food Law, sets out the general principles of food safety. Food is unsafe if it is harmful to health or unfit to eat, and unsafe food must not be sold. It also requires traceability, and the withdrawal or recall of unsafe food.

Regulation (EC) 178/2002 lays down the general principles and requirements of food safety, and one of its most important ideas is the meaning of unsafe food. Food is unsafe if it is injurious to health or unfit for human consumption. Food that is injurious to health could make someone ill, for example because it carries harmful bacteria or a hidden allergen. Food that is unfit for human consumption may not make anyone ill, but is not acceptable to eat, perhaps because it is rotten, contaminated with a foreign object, or has passed its use by date.

Food can become unsafe or unfit if it is contaminated with a biological, chemical or physical agent, or if its condition could cause an adverse health effect. Unsafe food must not be placed on the market. For retail staff, this is the reason behind so many everyday tasks, from date checks to removing damaged packs from sale.

The Food Safety Act 1990 is the main law on food safety and food standards across Great Britain. It is an offence to:

• Make food harmful to health.
• Sell food that does not meet food safety requirements.
• Sell food that is not of the nature, substance or quality the customer expects.

Hygiene rules are enforced in England by the Food Safety and Hygiene (England) Regulations 2013, with similar regulations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Article 5 of Regulation (EC) 852/2004 requires every food business to put in place, and keep up, a permanent procedure based on the principles of Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points, or HACCP.

HACCP is an internationally recognised system that helps a business to identify, evaluate and control the hazards that matter for food safety.

Your food safety management system is one of the three areas an inspector assesses.

• Conduct a hazard analysis.
• Determine the critical control points, or CCPs.
• Establish critical limits for each critical control point.
• Establish a system to monitor each critical control point.
• Establish the corrective action to take when monitoring shows a critical control point is not under control.
• Establish procedures to verify that the system is working.
• Establish documents and records for all these procedures.

Before HACCP can work, the business needs basic food safety conditions in place. These are called prerequisites. Examples include:

• Buying only from reputable, approved suppliers.
• Good personal hygiene procedures.
• Effective pest control.
• A clean, tidy and well-maintained workplace.
• Staff training, and good temperature control.

Everyone who handles food plays a part, by following these procedures every day.

Before the seven HACCP principles can be followed, a business must already have some essential food safety procedures in place. These are known as prerequisites, and they are the basic conditions needed to produce safe food. In a retail shop, they include buying products only from reputable suppliers, following personal hygiene procedures, running effective pest control, and keeping the premises clean, tidy and disinfected. Without these foundations, even a well-written HACCP plan will fail, because hazards will keep entering the business faster than the critical control points can deal with them.

That is why everyone who handles food needs to understand how to carry out safe food hygiene. You should be confident in your ability to identify hazards in your own work area and to follow the right control measures, whether that means checking a delivery, cleaning a slicer properly, or reporting a sign of pests to your supervisor.

In England and Wales, the Food Standards Agency provides Safer Food, Better Business packs, including a version for retailers. They help small businesses to set up a simple food safety management system based on the principles of HACCP. Similar packs are available in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

If your role includes helping with your workplace’s HACCP plan, you should consider further training in HACCP.

Employers have extra responsibilities under food safety law. These include:

• Registering the food business with the local council at least 28 days before it starts trading.
• Making sure the premises are designed, equipped and run to prevent contamination.
• Providing hand washing facilities, and preventing cross contamination.
• Training and supervising staff.
• Giving customers accurate allergen information.
• Setting up and running the food safety management system, with managers checking it is followed.

In the UK, local councils enforce food law, overseen by the Food Standards Agency, and by Food Standards Scotland in Scotland. Environmental Health Officers, or EHOs, enforce food safety and hygiene law, and Trading Standards Officers enforce food standards and labelling law.

The role of these officers is to enforce the law, and to protect the public from unsafe food.

Enforcement officers have the power to:

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

If your workplace receives a notice, it must be complied with. Obstructing an officer, or lying to one, is an offence.

If a business is not complying with food hygiene law, an officer can serve a hygiene improvement notice. It states:

• What is wrong, and why the notice has been served.
• What must be done to put it right.
• The time allowed for the improvements, which must be a minimum of 14 days.

It is a criminal offence not to comply with a notice.

Where there is an imminent risk to health, an officer can serve a hygiene emergency prohibition notice. It can close all or part of the premises immediately, or stop a process. The officer must then apply to a court within three days for a hygiene emergency prohibition order. The business can only reopen when the council certifies that the risk has gone.

For certain types of premises, a remedial action notice can also stop or restrict a process or the use of equipment, usually with immediate effect.

Breaking food safety law can lead to prosecution in the Magistrates’ Court or the Crown Court.

• Fines can be unlimited.
• Prison sentences can be up to two years in the Crown Court.
• People can be banned from running or managing a food business.

The business owner, managers, and in some cases staff, can be prosecuted.

The main defence under food safety law is called due diligence. To use it, a business must prove that it took all reasonable precautions, and did everything it reasonably could, to prevent the offence.

This depends on a food safety management system that is actually followed, backed up by accurate, complete records and full traceability of food and packaging. Following industry guides to good practice strengthens the defence.