The Committee will receive a presentation on the “Scores on the Doors” Scheme.
Minutes:
The Committee received a presentation on the “Scores on the Doors” scheme by the Food Safety Divisional Manager. Scores on the Doors is a Food Hygiene rating scheme. It provides details of inspections carried out of all food premises, including restaurants and manufacturers of food. Scores on the Doors is not an award scheme, it offers consumers guidance and transparency about the hygiene of food premises.
The Food Safety Divisional Manager was responsible for eight Environmental Health Officers and contractors. The officers carry out proactive and reactive work, relating to all aspects of food safety including dealing with food complaints, hygiene of premises, labelling of food and chemical composition of food. A significant part of their work involved routine proactive unannounced inspections which form the backbone of the scores on the doors scheme.
There are approximately 1500 food premises in the borough and 700 to 800 of these fall due for inspection each year. It is the responsibility of the food business to register with the Local Authority and the service links with other departments to gather information about businesses that fail to register. It would be useful to obtain information from non-domestic rates to find out more details of individual businesses, but this has not happened yet. It may be due to the way that the Data Protection Act is applied within the Council and officers are looking into how we can share data to help all services improve their functions to the benefit of the community.
The Committee were informed that a scoring system had been used for over 20 years, and that all high risk premises are inspected, unannounced within a 6 month period. Other premises are looked at more frequently based upon the risk to the public. This would include premises such as hospitals that provided food to vulnerable people, nurseries that cater for very young children etc.
The criteria which make up the scores for the Scores on the Doors are:
Compliance with – Structure and cleanliness
Confidence in Management
Compliance with– Food Hygiene and Safety procedures
These criteria are specified within legislation. All food practices are inspected include training records, controls, monitoring and verification including packaging materials and specialist processes. The division has a large covert sampling program linked to regional and national priorities. Sampling for adulteration of foods sold in the borough from the UK and imported foods from all over the world. Sampling includes microbiological testing and composition and labelling testing. It is now possible to use DNA testing on meats and fish and other products to determine species. Sampling is an important part of the food safety and inspection program.
All scores are published on the website www.scoresonthedoors.org.uk. Once business have been inspected and the scores established, the business is informed and a sticker showing how many stars they have is sent to them to display. Most businesses feel that they should be 5 stars, however a 3 star is very good, and a 2 star was the average score.
Members asked if it was necessary to have licensees for food premises. The officer explained that this was not the case, whilst there needed to be a trained person present; there was no requirement for a licensee. The committee were informed that the Food Standards Agency had campaigned for licensees in food premises but this policy had been abandoned about two years ago.
Contrary to public belief, 90% of food poisoning occurs in the home.
Supermarkets were pushing for longer use by dates and this therefore meant that food manufacturers are inspected to ensure that they have scientific evidence to prove that the food product would in fact be safe for the period specified. As a result, if a food product was used after the “use by” date it could potentially be very harmful and should not be consumed after the date has expired.
The Committee were informed that there were also other instructions on packaging along with the “use by” date. This is the instructions for safe storage. It will say keep refrigerated (and it may specify a temperature) it will also say something like “use within three days of opening”. These instructions should be followed even if it means throwing the food away before the end of its “use by” date.
“Best before” dates indicate that the quality of the food may not be as good after the date specified. The Committee were informed that it should be safe to eat food after its “best before” date has expired. (Within reason).
The Committee were informed that there should be a paper-trail and audit of all food products across the world, so they can be tracked back to the source.
Improvement notices and prohibition notices can be issued to premises that do not comply with food safety. Remedial action notices can be issued to manufacturers for a number of reasons. One of these reasons may be to require the business to reduce an unsafe ”use by” date.
The Committee noted that there were two schemes operating, one was the FSA scheme, the other was the transparency scheme (Scores on the Doors). The Committee were informed that the FSA had recently bought the software rights from transparency data and it may now be possible to merge the two schemes so that we have one national scheme instead of two. This will improve consumer confidence in the scheme and remove any inconsistencies that the two schemes currently create and allow widespread advertising of the scheme to inform the consumer and encourage food businesses to comply with food safety in advance of inspections.
The Committee thanked the officer for his informative presentation and asked that he report back in the future on further developments.