The Coroner's findings into the death of Mason Jones, the five-year-old boy who died in the E.coli outbreak in south Wales in 2005 were published at the end of November 2010 and recommended stronger enforcement of food hygiene laws. This has been accepted by the Food Standards Agency.

Recommendations and actions to be implemented are summarised as follows:

  1. Each local authority intervention in a food business – whether advice, inspection or enforcement – moves it towards full compliance with the law and additional guidance on this is to be provided to officers.
  2. A public consultation is to take place on extending the use of Remedial Action Notices to all food premises. These notices would allow local authority enforcement officers to require a process or activity in a food business that poses a significant risk to human health to be stopped immediately, and would not allow it to recommence until specified action to reduce the risk had been taken. Current measures such as the Hygiene Prohibition Notice can be used to take immediate action where any activity presents a health risk; Remedial Action Notices will be an additional way of compelling businesses to take corrective action*.
  3. A Food Hygiene Delivery Programme has been established to prioritise, direct and measure progress in a programme of work to improve food hygiene delivery and enforcement across the UK. It was set up to drive forward actions to respond to the recommendations of the Public Inquiry, and is chaired by the FSA Director of Operations.

(Phases of this programme are set out here.)

The Public Inquiry made 24 recommendations but the main findings were:

  1. It was vital for food businesses to plan and abide by HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) principles, these should be absolutely key to their business.
  2. "Light touch' enforcement should not apply where safety was at issue, no matter what the size and resources of the company.

The enforcement of food hygiene should become more consistent as a result of the implementation of these proposals.

Hygiene and safety systems are not only forms to be filled in but must be implemented and regularly checked and updated. Business must always keep to the forefront of their minds that safety is more than just red tape it is vital to their business and their customers.

* 'remedial action notice' (approved establishments only), forbids the use of certain processes, premises or equipment, or imposes conditions on how a process is carried out – it is similar to a hygiene emergency prohibition notice, but it does not need to be confirmed by a court.

This article was written for Law-Now, CMS Cameron McKenna's free online information service. To register for Law-Now, please go to www.law-now.com/law-now/mondaq

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The original publication date for this article was 13/01/2011.