Overview of new hygiene legislation

As of the 1st January 2006 new food hygiene legislation came into force. The following is an overview of what may affect you as a food business operator.

Regulation (EU) No. 178/2002

This lays down the principles of food law and actually came into force on the 1st January 2005. It supersedes a large majority of the Food Safety Act 1990 and provides new definitions for 'food', 'food business operator', 'food business' and 'placing on the market'. It also deals with unsafe food as well as labelling issues. 178/2002 is enforced by the General Food Regulations 2004

Regulation (EU) No. 852/2004

This replaces the Food Safety (General Food Hygiene) Regulations 1995. Most of the detailed requirements for walls, floors and ceilings, structural requirements, wash basins etc are the same or very similar. The main difference can be found within Article 5 in relation to the application of food safety management Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) principles in all businesses. 852/2004 is enforced by the Food Hygiene (England) Regulations 2006.

Regulation (EU) No. 853/2004

This regulation replaces the previous product specific hygiene regulations, such as the egg products regulations, meat and meat product regulations and dairy product regulations etc. This is therefore used to 'approve' premises where products of animal origin intended for human consumption are produced. This approval is subject to certain exemptions, which are given in more detail in the regulations themselves. Premises that fall under this regulation must also comply with 852/2004. If you think you may need approval an application form is available on line.

Registration of Food Premises.(79.80 KB)

The General Food Hygiene (England) Regulations 2006

These regulations contain a large majority of the provisions that were previously found within the Food Safety Act 1990, and contain enforcement powers such as hygiene improvement notices, hygiene prohibition orders and hygiene emergency prohibition notices and orders. It is where the defence of 'due diligence' can be found and also where the powers of enforcement officers lie.
These regulations also contain the temperature control requirements that were previously found within the Food Safety (Temperature Control) Regulations 1995.

A more comprehensive list of legislation can be found at The Food Standards Agency website (external link).

The documents on this website can be downloaded and are published using the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) format. To view or print these documents, Adobe's Acrobat PDF reader is required which can be downloaded from the Adobe Systems' website (external link)