FSA unveils plans for massive food safety shake-up

The Food Standards Agency has laid out plans to strip cash-strapped local authorities of control over food safety for large businesses, including supermarkets, manufacturers and major out-of-home chains.

The proposals would see a “fundamental shift” away from inspections by local enforcement officers, in favour of a system of national level recognition. The FSA would rely on the vast amounts of data generated by companies like Aldi and Tesco, rather than depleted local authority inspection regimes.

The Grocer revealed last month that the FSA was planning a major shake-up of its Food Hygiene Rating Scheme, which would see it use data from supermarket third-party audits and free up enforcement health officers to focus on smaller “rogue operators”.

However, under the latest plans to be put to the FSA board next week, a far more sweeping “direction of travel” has been set out. The goal is to create a national level regulation regime covering food hygiene inspections and food standards for the biggest operators across the food and drink industry.

Aldi, Asda, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose have been taking part in year-long trials to test the concept. The FSA said it would look to extend the strategy across food manufacturers and food to go operators, and would work with the food safety regimes in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, in a bid to try to create a UK-wide system.

It stressed that safety was paramount in the changes and acknowledged thet the moves would need ministerial support, as well as more resources and technology, to enable the FSA to work as a national regulator.

The FSA claimed that with more than 600,000 food businesses in the UK, mostly small and micro businesses, it was not a good use of resources for local authorities to police large businesses like Tesco, Amazon or Deliveroo, which wield huge influence over their supply chains and consumers.

“Given their influence and impact on consumers and other businesses, we believe there is a case in principle for more strategic, national-level regulatory assurance of the biggest, most influential businesses,” says the report.

“A national level regulator could leverage these relationships to tackle non-compliance at a business, rather than local store level; to understand risk better across the food system, and to convene large businesses to share best practice on food safety.”

The plans laid out by the FSA cover both food hygiene regimes, which include areas such as pest control records, refrigeration records and assessment of store management and food standards, which includes regulation government the composition of foods, a key part of the laws protecting against threats such as food allergies.

Despite acknowledging the proposals represent a dramatic increase in its “strategic risk profile”, the FSA said the concept of national regulation was not new to the body, with it already delivering direct controls in meat, dairy and wine.

But it added: “Without additional resources, and specifically the technology that will enable the FSA to undertake this role with only a very small team, there will be a limit to how far the FSA can and should go towards national level regulation.”

In an exclusive interview with The Grocer, FSA interim CEO Katie Pettifer said maintaining safety amid the shake-up was the “absolute priority”. She said the supermarkets using their food hygiene data had convinced the FSA there was potential for wider change that would create a more effective system, if it could win ministerial backing.

“The first thing to stress is we are always going to have independent checks on businesses to ensure they are safe, but what we have been doing is trying out a different way of do that,” she said.

“Our trial with supermarkets has given us confidence that a national level of regulation could provide a greater level of food safety.

“We think it will provide more scrutiny of supermarkets, not less.

“We are now taking the first steps. We are some way off changing the law to make ourselves the regulator or doing things with other sectors, although they are things we would like to explore.

“This is absolutely not about allowing businesses to regulate themselves.”