Food safety experts are calling on the government to block moves to give supermarkets day-to-day control over the “score on the doors” food hygiene ratings system, amid a growing crisis of confidence over the UK’s food safety regime.
The Grocer has learnt FSA bosses have held talks with worried senior food safety figures this week, after it was revealed the agency plans to use supermarkets’ third party audits, rather than overstretched local authority inspections, to underpin their hygiene and food safety performance records.
new figures released today by the agency showed more than 100,000 food premises, many of them supermarkets, were overdue for ratings inspections
It comes after at last count, with nearly 40,000 new food businesses having not been inspected at all.
Meanwhile, a BBC investigation this week accused businesses including Sainsbury’s of misleading customers over its foods hygiene scores, in a scandal which has shone more scrutiny on the agency’s proposals.
In August, The Grocer revealed FSA plans for supermarkets to take over the responsibility for providing the data for their own food hygiene scores on the doors ratings, in a move aimed at concentrating stretched inspection resources on smaller, “rogue” retailers.
Last month, The Grocer revealed the agency planned to go further by stripping cash-strapped local authorities of control of food safety for a huge swathe of large businesses, including supermarkets, manufacturers and major out-of-home chains such as Greggs.
Instead of inspections by local enforcement officers, it has proposed a system of national level recognition, which would see the FSA rely on the vast amounts of data generated by companies like Sainsbury’s and Tesco.
Today the FSA released a report urging the government to take action to tackle the “dangerous” decline in local authority resources, warning they were putting consumers at risk.
The report reveals long-running cutbacks to local authorities have had a devastating impact on their ability to carry out food hygiene and food safety inspections, with local authorities unable to catch up with the huge backlog of inspections that were missed during the course of the pandemic.
The latest data, covering the second half of 2023/24 for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, showed nearly half of all inspections that were due at premises had not been carried out, with the vast majority of businesses in medium and lower-risk categories, many of them supermarkets.
Meanwhile, it said 40,000 new businesses, twice as many as before the pandemic, had not had yet received any food hygiene inspections
FSA chair Professor Susan Jebb warned shortages of key professionals was putting the public at “significant risk”.
However, food safety experts have told The Grocer they are deeply disturbed at plans to hand responsibility for providing data to supermarkets amid the backdrop of local authority cuts.
Professor Tim Lang, emeritus professor of food policy at City, University of London, said: “The FSA has underestimated the reaction these moves would get, and they have forgotten that the last Labour government came into power in 1997 in a climate full of fury over things like mad cow disease and a wave of public food scandals. It was against this backdrop that the FSA, and later its food hygiene rating systems, was launched .
“Now we see the FSA looking at how to cut costs and streamline how inspections get done. The risk is that it’s assuming every food enterprise has got the same level of equipment and personnel.
“It’s also putting an absurd level of reliance on big companies to be better than smaller ones based, I’m afraid, on very little evidence that that is the case.
“It forgets that the scores on the doors system was brought in to protect the public, and that without having physical local authority inspections it all falls down and risks becoming a box-ticking exercise which, as we have already seen, has allowed complacency to creep in.”
Earlier this week, an investigation by the BBC accused business in large parts of London, including Sainsbury’s, of displaying inaccurate food hygiene ratings, including secret recordings capturing restaurant and supermarket staff making inaccurate claims about their performance under the scores on the doors system.
It claimed a raft of businesses displayed inaccurate scores, including a Sainsbury’s store in Leyton which displayed a top mark of five stars when its official FSA rating at the time was zero – indicating urgent improvement was needed.
In response to the BBC investigation, Sainsbury’s said food safety was a priority and claimed “95%” of its stores had a rating of five.
“We’ve removed an outdated rating sticker at our Leyton High Road Local store and reviewed our procedures to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”
The company also said it was “continuing to make improvements at the store” and admitted that the wrong rating about the store had also been displayed on the Sainsbury’s website, and that this had been rectified. Since the BBC visited the store, its rating has improved from zero to three, meaning hygiene there is now “generally satisfactory”.
However, food safety lawyer Jon Payne, who was one of those involved in the BBC probe, told The Grocer the case provided proof the FSA’s plans to entrust supermarkets with more control over their data were misguided.
“My view is that in some parts of the country, quite clearly local authorities are lagging behind. That’s to do with availability of staff but it is not the same across the whole of the UK.
“I’m not convinced that the FSA has provided anywhere near enough evidence to back its proposals.
“I think they need to come up with a much more planned and cohesive way forward.
“Self-regulation like what they are proposing works in some sectors. Where businesses can show a good record, there may be some merit in giving them more freedom, but there are companies out there who have had some very poor ratings. For example, you do have to question how a company like Sainsbury’s can get a zero rating.
“My view is that if a company has got as zero rating, there is no way they should be subject to self-regulation. I know this may be an isolated incident, but if even a small minority of the stores of a retailer of its size are performing badly then that alone should be reason not to allow them to self-regulate.
“I recognise that local authority resources are thin, but on something so fundamental as food safety, you end up in a very dangerous situation if you start removing local authority inspections from the process.”
Katrina Anderson, principal associate at Mills & Reeve LLP, told The Grocer she believed the timing of the BBC investigation could torpedo the FSA’s plans, which she already felt were sailing on troubled waters.
“I think there is a fundamental issue when it comes to relying on using the supermarkets’ own data as the basis for inspections, which the FSA is going to find very hard to overcome.
“I think they are going to find it extremely hard to get this through.”
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