Food Safety

Any business with a 'food' element must meet requirements of three current pieces of UK food legislation. Storage, distribution, packaging, wholesalers and retailers are all included, even a Church wanting to hold an annual fete must be registered with the Local Authority Environmental Health Department.

Increasingly, the complexity of legislation and the manner in which it is enforced leaves many businesses struggling to cope – we can help.

On 29 April 2004 The European Parliament issued a new regulation on the hygiene of foodstuffs.

One of the key areas states that Food Business operators shall put into place, implement and maintain a permanent procedure based on the principles of hazard analysis critical control points (HACCP).

The HACCP principles referred to, include the following:

• Identifying any hazards that must be prevented, eliminated or reduced
• Identifying the critical control points to prevent or eliminate a hazard
• Establishing critical limits at critical control points
• Implementing effective monitoring procedures
• Establishing corrective actions when a critical control point is not under control
• Establishing documents and records to demonstrate the effective application
• When any modification is made in the food business it must be reviewed

We have assisted food businesses, from manufacturers to hotels in developing a suitable HACCP Food Management System already. It can appear quite daunting at first, but we help you through every stage, since we've experienced similar issues many times before.

An additional area of the legislation states that food business operators are to ensure that: "food handlers are supervised and instructed and/or trained in food hygiene matters"

Again, we can help to identify the appropriate level of training and provide in-house courses to recognised national standards.

For assistance in completing your food safety assessment contact us today by telephoning 01544 328434 or by visiting our contact page to email us your enquiry.