Hygiene for food businesses

Food businesses must register their business with their local council and comply with food law.

Food business registration

28 days before opening a food business, you must register with the environmental health service (EHS) at your local council. Food operations include:

• selling food
• cooking food
• preparing food
• distributing food
• storing food
• handling food

You may also need to have your business approved if you supply another business with:

• meat and meat products
• eggs
• milk and dairy products
• fish and fish products

For information on how to register a business, contact the EHS in your local council. The EHS will also be able to advise you about how the law applies to your business in practice.

Food hygiene and safety inspections

Food safety enforcement officers from your local council will inspect your food business to make sure you are complying with food law. You will not usually be given notice of a food safety inspection.

When they think it is necessary, food safety inspectors can take enforcement action to protect the public, including:

• serving a legal notice that sets out certain things you must do or forbidding you from using certain processes, premises or equipment
• recommending a prosecution, in serious cases

Find out what to expect from a food safety inspection.

Food hygiene regulations

Food hygiene regulations set out the hygiene requirements for all aspects of your business. You will need to make sure that:

• your establishments meet hygiene standards
• staff follow good personal hygiene practice
• food safety hazards (including cooking, refrigeration, cross contamination etc)
• staff receive adequate instruction and/or training in food hygiene, and are supervised

Depending on the nature of your business, you may also need to keep written records of how you manage food safety hazards.

You must put food safety management procedures in place based on the principles of HACCP (hazard analysis critical control point). In practice, this means that you must have documented procedures to manage food safety hazards in your business.

Guides such as the Safe Catering Pack, Safer food better business and industry guides will assist you in meeting this legal requirement.