Food Safety and Hygiene

Good food hygiene is essential to help prevent food poisoning and protect your reputation with customers. Most food businesses within the UK are already required to register all of their premises with their local authority before they open or start using new premises. As of 1 January 2006 registration was required under EU Regulations.

In addition certain types of businesses require approval, rather than registration. These include sites that produce food from meat and meat products, eggs, milk and dairy products and fish and fish products. The approval requirements do not apply to primary producers. Food business operators should contact their local authority to ensure they are correctly registered or approved.

The Food Standards Agency provides resources to help food businesses produce safe food, including:

Starting up: Your first steps to running a catering business
Good hygiene is good for business
Food hygiene: a guide for businesses

SALSA – Safe and Local Supplier Approval

SALSA is a nationally recognised food safety certification scheme specifically developed for small and micro producers. SALSA is an approval scheme but also offers technical support and assistance throughout the approval process and training in the form of HACCP courses.

Incident Management

FDF is actively involved in emergency planning issues and incident management. That means when things go wrong – as they occasionally do – we are best placed to help members understand the issues and how they may impact their businesses.

This section provides you with the resources to be prepared and resolve problems that may affect your business in the future and, if something does happen, help you deal with it to minimise its effect on your business. See further details at the FSA website

FSA Food Alerts

FSA issues Food Alerts for information and action to local authorities and interested parties via email and via a text service. These Alerts are also copied to Consultants in Communicable Disease Control, Trading Standards Officers and food trade organisations, to alert them to current food issues.

They are often issued in conjunction with a product withdrawal or recall by a manufacturer, retailer or distributor, in which case they will generally appear, unnamed, as RASFFs. FSA also maintains a searchable archive list of alerts on its website.

To subscribe to FSA automatic notification service, go to their e-mail and mobile updates page and follow the on screen instructions.

Rolling updates for FDF members

We provide our members with rolling updates on issues related to residues and contaminants and food contact materials

Did you find this information useful?

Find our more about what FDF can offer - our membership team will be happy to answer any questions that you have on 020 7420 7208 or email members.enquiries@fdf.org.uk

Further information on the benefits of FDF membership

Small Business Membership

SME Toolkit index

FDF has collated information on the following topics:

Food Safety and Hygiene

Food Labelling

Food Authenticity

Reformulation

Advertising and Marketing

Workplace Health

Guidance on other topics coming soon