Baroness Jones of Whitchurch – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Jones of Whitchurch on 2016-09-12.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of whether there are sufficient obligations on local authorities to inspect food production companies, and on retailers, to ensure that no food crime or mislabelling is occurring.
Lord Prior of Brampton
Food labelling rules are set at European Union level and provide a framework for mandatory information to be provided on food labels as well as ensuring that food information is not misleading. This Government has pressed for better information for consumers during negotiations relating to food labelling in Europe.
Food businesses are responsible for ensuring their products are safe and accurately labelled. The Government backs this up with risk-based checks carried out by local authorities. In addition, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs develops validated testing methods under its Food Authenticity programme to check for mis-description and fraud. These methods are used by public analysts and local authorities to support food law enforcement.
The majority of food law enforcement is delegated to local authorities throughout the United Kingdom who carry out checks of food businesses in their area to ensure compliance with food safety, traceability and labelling requirements. To support this, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) makes funding available to UK Enforcement Authorities for sampling and surveillance of food to help ensure risk-based, targeted checks on food products throughout the food chain.
The Government has set up the National Food Crime Unit to increase the capacity to identify, disrupt and prevent food crime. It does this in part by developing intelligence packages and passing these either to the police service or to a local authority to take forward the investigation.
Measures to co-ordinate food standards enforcement across Local Authorities are kept under continual review by the FSA to improve effectiveness of delivery, working with local authorities and trading standards professional bodies.
