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Food Law

Food Law News - EU - 2003

FSA News Item, 12 December 2003

HYGIENE - EU food hygiene legislation update

The Food Standards Agency has issued an update on the formal adoption by the Council of Ministers, of a Common Position on First Reading, on proposals to consolidate and simplify EU food hygiene legislation.

In July 2000, the European Commission (EC) published a package of five measures to update and consolidate 17 existing hygiene directives. The package is intended to introduce consistency and clarity throughout the food production chain.

Since then FSA officials have been representing the UK at a series of Council Working Group meetings.

A note informing stakeholders of the Common Position agreed on 27 October 2003 is copied below and is available online on the FSA web site.

The next stage in the negotiation is for the proposals to return to the European Parliament for Second Reading.

This is likely to happen in January 2004, so there is a strong possibility of agreement being reached and the proposals entering into force in the first half of 2004.

If the formula agreed in the Council for the date of application is adopted, the legislation will apply from 1 January 2006 or 18 months after entry into force, whichever is the later.

Seventh summary of progress on the consolidation and simplification of food hygiene legislation
10 December 2003

This note reports on the formal adoption by the Council of Ministers of a Common Position on First Reading of the package of hygiene proposals at the Environment Council on 27 October 2003.

This summary also:

Latest texts

Consolidated versions of the documents on which this Common Position was reached are available from the FSA (use links given below).

These are, respectively:

Next steps in the process

The next stage in the negotiation is for the proposals to return to the European Parliament for Second Reading.

This is likely to happen in January 2004, so there is a strong possibility of agreement being reached and the proposals entering into force in the first half of 2004.

If the formula agreed in the Council for the date of application is adopted, the legislation will apply from 1 January 2006 or 18 months after entry into force, whichever is the later.

FSA review of the Council's conclusions

Our broad aims are that the legislation should protect public health and be of such a nature that food business operators take responsibility for producing food safely.

We want to safeguard the interests of consumers in relation to food while ensuring that the controls proposed under this legislation are proportionate to risk and not burdensome to food business operators of any size or sector nor to the relevant enforcement bodies.

As they now stand, the proposals represent a significant improvement upon the originals. They are more explicitly focused on the need to protect public health in a way which is effective, proportionate and risk-based.

The proposals establish high-level objectives for food safety with a minimum of prescription as to how these are to be achieved.

The detail of how food businesses can best comply will be established in the framework of voluntary guides, which individual industry sectors are encouraged to develop.

More specific examples of where we have succeeded in securing improvements to the proposals include:

1. Food safety management procedures should be based on HACCP principles, rather than requiring that HACCP (as described in the Codex Alimentarius basic hygiene texts) be operated

This will enable a flexible and proportionate approach to be adopted by those businesses for which the full rigour of the HACCP system would not be appropriate.

Additional flexibility has been secured by providing for food business operators to provide evidence of compliance in the manner the competent authority requires, taking account of the nature and size of the food business.

Prescriptive time limits for the retention of documentation have also been dropped.

2. Requirements for primary production have been clarified

The role of guides to good practice has been augmented so that it is clear that these can describe hazards and the means of controlling them in a generic way, which will make it easier for them to be applied.

The UK successfully negotiated more precise wording to link all the requirements back to public health protection, and also obtained agreement that the requirement for record keeping should be minimised, so that it does not add unnecessarily to current record-keeping requirements.

3. Frequency of controls for fresh meat

We secured significant improvements to the original proposal. In respect of the presence of an official veterinarian (OV) in slaughterhouses, the text now includes a list of circumstances in which full-time presence is not required.

In addition, there is a possibility for on-farm ante mortem inspection, by an approved veterinarian replacing that task at the slaughterhouse.

In cutting plants, the text now specifically provides for either an OV or a meat inspector to be present at a frequency to be determined by the Competent Authority, rather than the current daily requirement.

This will be done on the basis of a risk assessment.

4. Provisions for risk-based meat inspection and the use of plant staff to assist the OV

In the face of stiff opposition, we secured provisions for risk based post-mortem inspection, including visual-only inspection and the voluntary use of plant staff, where such inspection has limited use in public health protection.

This will allow a refocusing of official effort towards controlling the major meat-borne hazards, which are not detected by post-mortem inspection.

It will also free up meat inspectors to carry out more of the duties currently carried out by OVs and will reinforce the principle of operator responsibility for the safe production of meat.