Food Hygiene Regulations
Food hygiene regulations have been a fact of life for those working in the food industry for many years. The first food hygiene regulations were introduced in the UK in the 1950's following public concern about the poor standards of food hygiene that prevailed at that time.
Since that time there have been significant changes in the UK food hygiene regulations in the 1960's, 1970's and 1990's. The current food hygiene regulations are actually European Union Regulations. These regulations are the European Food Regulations EC Regulation 852/2004. Their implementation was enacted by the Food Hygiene (England) Regulations 2005 and similar regulations in the rest of the UK.
These food hygiene regulations are intended to help bring about harmonisation of the laws governing food control across the European Union, enabling trade in food and food services to be conducted across national borders.
These EU based food hygiene regulations came into force in Britain on 1st January 2006 and have largely the same requirements as the old UK regulations. The one major departure is that the 2005 Regulations demand that all food businesses have in place a written Food Safety Management System based on HACCP principles, with appropriate records.
The use of a HACCP based food safety management systems now underpins most food hygiene regulations across the world. Those charged with enforcing food hygiene regulations usually concentrate on evaluating the effectiveness of a food business's HACCP system.
So whilst historically, food hygiene regulations were mainly concerned about the cleanliness of people, equipment and premises the emphasis of modern regulations is on the systems in place for food handling, preparation, and storage.
This is not to say that modern food hygiene regulations do not address the issue of cleanliness, they certainly do, but over the last 50 -60 years legislators have come to realise that a dirty floor is less important than the temperature at which a meat pie is stored or the risk of cross-contamination to a salad.
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