Food safety and animal feed incidents

A food incident is when there are concerns about the safety of a food (or animal feed) product and action may need to be taken to protect consumers. 

What is unsafe food or feed?

Food is 'unsafe' if it is harmful to health or unfit to eat. Food that is unfit includes food that doesn't meet quality standards, but isn't necessarily harmful to health.

Animal feed is unsafe if it has a direct adverse effect on human or animal health, or makes edible animal products unsafe to eat.

Reporting unsafe food

You must tell the relevant authorities if you think food or animal feed you have is unfit or harmful to health. This also applies to food or feed that you previously had. The relevant authorities may include:

• Food Standards Agency (FSA) - for food
• Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) - for feed

It may also be a good idea to inform your trade association.

Types of food incidents

The FSA defines a food incident as:

'Any event, where, based on the information available, there are concerns about actual or suspected threats to the safety, quality or integrity of food or animal feed and that could require intervention to protect consumers' interests.

The main categories of incidents are:

• contamination of food or animal feed - during processing, distribution, retail or catering
• incorrect food labelling - such as the omission of allergenic ingredients on a food label
• environmental pollution - such as a fire or chemical or oil spills

The FSA classifies an incident based on its potential impact and considering how the incident should be managed. There are four levels of classification:

• routine
• serious
• severe
• major

Following investigation, these incidents may mean that food or feed must be either: 

• 'withdrawn' - removed from sales and taken off the shelves
• 'recalled' - removed from sales and customers asked to return the product

See more on food withdrawals and recalls.