Plans for supermarkets to “Mark their own homework” have been delayed and a new consultation process started.

Legislative plans put on hold until the conclusions of a new Senior Steering forum are presented to the board in June 2025.

Full story courtesy of today’s The Grocer below:

The Food Standards Agency has carried out a major climbdown over controversial plans to allow supermarkets and other large food businesses to run their own food safety inspections, after a major backlash from local authorities and campaigners.

Last month, The Grocer revealed food safety experts were calling on ministers to block moves for the FSA to give supermarkets day-to-day control over the Scores on the Doors food hygiene ratings system. They had also expressed outrage over wider moves to extend the so-called “national regulation” to a much wider group of businesses, also including manufacturers and large out-of-home companies, so cash-strapped local authorities could focus their limited resources on smaller “rogue operators”.

However, today the agency admitted there had been a lack of transparency over the proposals and announced it had put the plans on hold.

In August, The Grocer revealed the FSA planned to allow supermarkets to take over the responsibility for their own food hygiene ratings under the Scores on the Doors scheme, following year-long trials carried out with  Aldi, Asda, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose.

The agency subsequently went even further, saying it was looking to extend the concept across large food manufacturers and food to go operators. It added it was working with the food safety regimes in Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland, in a bid to try to create a UK-wide “national regulation” system.

However, anger from food safety experts and local authorities over the plans was heightened after a BBC investigation found businesses including Sainsbury’s had been misleading customers over their food hygiene scores.

Board papers published today ahead of the FSA’s forthcoming December meeting set out plans for a rethink.

“One of the common themes we heard is a clear need for greater transparency around the proof-of-concept trial,” the documents say.

“We acknowledge that it would have been better in retrospect to have published the trial evaluation earlier, and provided more opportunity to share detailed information about the trial and the evaluation. 

“We have also heard a lot of questions and concerns about how any process of national level scrutiny would work in detail, including how it would interact with the work of primary authorities and local authorities, how risks would be managed, and how complaints would be dealt with.”

The FSA has now promised an “intensive engagement period on the proof of concept”, revealing it had  set up a new Senior Steering Forum including environmental health and Trading Standards bosses from across the UK, which would report back in early 2025.

The board added that the retailers involved in the trial had said they were still “committed“ to the proposals, despite the fallout.

“We will keep working with the large retailers and their primary authorities to refine the approach taken during the trial, and to share the learning to date,” the FSA said.

Meanwhile, the FSA told The Grocer proposals for longer-term legislative change, which would be required by the plans to extend national regulation across the food sector, had been put on hold.

“We’ve paused any policy work on ideas for longer-term reforms, to focus on engagement with stakeholders about the trial and potential next steps,” a spokeswoman said.

A previous report by the FSA said it believed there was a case in principle for more strategic, national-level regulatory assurance of the “biggest, most influential businesses”, which would see the FSA act as a national regulator rather than local authorities.

“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,” it said at the time.

Isle of Man abandons plan to carry out food hygiene inspections at Restaurants, Cafes and Take-aways. High priority outlets such as hospital and schools will be inspected, but still not a good look for tourists. If there aren’t enough resources to inspect these physically, then surely a remote inspection is better than none at all?

Full story here

Over 2,300 illegal products seized in the last 3 months – FROM THE SAME SHOP. Items filled with additives, colourings and banned e-numbers – often with labels not in English have been seized by Westminster Environmental Health. Full story here

Call for Scores on the Doors to include health ratings. Nomad Foods, owner of Birds Eye, Findus and Goodfellas is calling on the Government to introduce mandatory scores for healthiness of food including fat, sugar and salt contents. Full article here

More calls for compulsory display of stickers in an update to BBC London’s article earlier this week. In response, FSA pledges to raise the issue with Local Authorities.

Link to tonights video here

Last evening BBC London showed an extended version of the recent FHRS sticker fraud article a link to which can be found here.

As well as some shocking evidence as to the extent of sticker fraud, the programme is now questioning the fitness for purpose of the scheme – particularly in as the is still no compulsory requirement for food businesses in England to display their ratings.

The scheme was launched some 14 years ago and today 76% of businesses now achieve 5 (stars). Although it has been incredibly successful in improving compliance, much has changed in that time.  We believe it is time for a review, with an urgency to re-commence the (paused) process leading to legislation which will mandate compulsory display.

Not many consumers realise that even the current 5 stars rating includes 4 subsections, which can mean that – even at that level – there are still some minor non-compliances. Is time to re-examine the effectiveness and incentives to further improve for the 76%?

Link to todays BBC undercover investigation to discover the extent of fake food hygiene stickers in East London.

If you see a fake sticker on display then our Whitleblower
facility enables a report to be sent direct to the inspecting authority. Search
for the business on www.scoresonthedoors.org.uk
then click the link to report.

£28,000 fine for allergen contamination. If any food business thinks they can pay lip service to allergen procedures maybe the size this fine will make them re-consider. But the consequences could have been far greater than money.

Linke to full story from ITV here

The latest Ipsos attitude survey released this week shows 42% of consumers checked a Food Hygiene score within the last 12 months. When we launched Scores on the Doors 19 years ago the figure was 9%. Progress indeed.

Download the full report here

Supermarkets to self-audit. Trials of self audit are now complete and proposals to allow large supermarkets to self audit are expected to be presented at next month’s FSA Board meeting.

The following article has been reproduced courtesy of The Grocer

29 August 2024

Supermarkets to take over ‘Scores on the Doors’ hygiene inspections

Supermarkets are to take over the responsibility for their own food hygiene inspections under the ’Scores on the Doors’ ratings system, in a move by food standards bosses to concentrate stretched inspection resources on rogue retailers.

The Food Standards Agency is due to submit proposals in the next few weeks that would see the likes of Tesco and Sainsbury’s submit data from their third party auditors, rather than inspections being carried out by local authorities.

The move represents a huge shift in what has become the most public-facing aspect of the FSA’s work. The ratings, ranging from zero (meaning a need for urgent improvement) to five (very good) having become a key feature on the doors of restaurants and supermarkets across the UK since they were introduced in 2010.

However, the FSA said the switch would allow councils to concentrate on higher-risk elements in the industry more likely to be putting the public at risk of food disease outbreaks or threats from allergens. 

Outgoing FSA chief executive Emily Miles, who is moving to become head of food at Defra next month, told The Grocer trials had shown supermarkets could provide a far greater level of data than local authority inspectors.

“We’re basically saying there are a small number of retailers with thousands of stores,” she said.

“They are doing a huge amount of food hygiene audits using third-party providers. They are low risk and they may be inspected every three years anyway. 

“Over the course of the pilot we have had access to 10,000 store audits compared to what we would have had from local authority inspections, which would have been 1,500. 

“So we’re suddenly getting access to way more information about food hygiene and what is going on.

“We did some audits to make sure that what Tesco or Sainsbury’s were saying was accurate. 

“We sent auditors to make sure what they were saying was true and when they claimed a strong hygiene performance we agreed this was true.”

The hygiene checks will cover practices such as stock control, pest control and store management.

Miles said she believed giving the responsibility to retailers would also help build stronger links with the FSA to co-operate on future food safety issues.

“We think there is more of a parity of arms if they are being regulated by the FSA rather than by local authorities and we’d be interested in changing the food law practice to bring the FSA in.

“We think there is a more FSA driven approach we can use where there are businesses that we can trust. We wouldn’t want to do it if these were businesses we didn’t trust. 

”We would still have the potential for inspections but we would do it at much lower frequency if systems were good enough. 

“As long as we’ve got that assurance that their own systems are good enough and that they are being transparent and applying good standards.  

”At the moment we are just thinking about the biggest retailers. There are questions now over what happens to the hygiene ratings and how does that policy get applied. 

“The question then is whether you want to include it to other national level businesses, people like Greggs for example.”

The proposed changes are the latest move by the FSA to concentrate resources on rogue operators when it comes to food standards and safety inspections, with changes to the frequency of food standards operations by councils already undergoing a major shake-up based on a new FSA “risk matrix”.

In an exclusive interview with The Grocer this week, Miles warned that continued cutbacks to local authority capabilities threatened the future of food safety in the UK and said policymakers would “be fools” to allow it to happen.