Food Standards Agency
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Food Law Code of Practice: views wanted
The Agency has launched a consultation to seek the views of stakeholders on proposed changes to the Food Law Code of Practice. The consultation runs until 17 September 2013.
The Food Law Code of Practice provides statutory guidance to local authorities on the way in which they should carry out official controls at food businesses and enforce food law.
The Code requires periodic revision so that it continues to reflect current enforcement practices and priorities, and continues to support local authorities in ensuring that the delivery of official controls is proportionate, risk based, effective and consistent.
Proposed changes
The current consultation seeks the views of stakeholders on the following changes to the Code:
- Updating and clarifying the risk descriptors used to assign risk scores to food businesses in order to improve the consistency by officers in risk scoring.
- Improving the effectiveness of enforcement by redistributing the minimum inspection frequency of a number of businesses. This will allow local authorities to focus their enforcement resources on those businesses that are non-compliant with food law.
- Streamlining enforcement by enabling the transfer of enforcement powers to a single enforcement body in a small group of food businesses where joint enforcement currently takes place.
These changes aim to ensure that the delivery of official controls is targeted at those businesses where intervention is necessary and that food business operators comply with food law.
A similar consultation on the Feed Law Code of Practice will take place in the autumn of 2013.
Further information
The consultation document can be found below. For further information on this consultation please contact Robert Piling, Delivery Quality Assurance Branch at the Food Standards Agency, on 0207 276 8436.
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