Devil is in the detail as simplified food safety laws come into force

Manufacturers must start preparing now for a new wave of legislation if they are going to comply in time, warned Neil Griffiths, chairman of the Society of Food Hygiene Technology (SoFHT).

Speaking at a SoFHT conference last month, Griffiths said: "We've seen a substantive amount of legislation and we are seeing massive changes in the legislative framework impacting now and in the future."

As well as the General Food Law Regulation, which requires manufacturers to have 'one up, one down' traceability from January 1 next year, Griffiths highlighted the Microbiological Criteria for Foodstuffs Regulation and new hygiene regulations, which will be implemented on January 1 2006.

The microbiological criteria regulation will define microbiological testing of high-risk foods, such as chilled ready meals and meat products. "[The new criteria] will have some significant implications for microbiological work done in factories," said Griffiths. "It lays down methodologies that need to be adopted and if you are going to do testing you need to do it in a specific way."

The new Food Safety Hygiene Regulations will require all food businesses to have a hazard analysis critical control point (HACCP)-based system to identify activities critical to food safety.

While the new regulations will consolidate and simplify the 17 existing hygiene directives covering individual sectors, there could be problems, warned Griffiths.

"In establishing a regulation that is more general there is a need to fill in the details," he said. "Guides can fill in these details but the difficulty is whether we can separate what is a legal requirement and what is best practice."

However, he said that the regulations would not damage small businesses as they could be implemented to suit a company's needs.

"There is a degree of flexibility to enable implementation to reflect different sizes of businesses," said Griffiths. "HACCP does mean establishing documents and records but it does allow some flexibility as long as it doesn't compromise hygiene."