Find out what you need to do to manage food safety in your business to comply with new food hygiene legislation.
All catering and retail food businesses must put in place a written food safety management system and keep it up to date.
Go to Related Pages for free Safer Food, Better Business Packs to help small businesses meet this requirement. The council's Environmental Health service gives free help and advice to businesses in Eastbourne.
What Do You Need to Do?
Food safety management is all about what you do to manage how food is produced in your business, to make sure it is safe to eat.
One of the key requirements of the law is that you must be able to show what you do to make or sell food that is safe to eat and have this written down.
You must put in place food safety management procedures and keep up to date records relating to your procedures.
If you change the type of food you produce, or change how you work, you must review these procedures.
Your written food safety management procedures must be based on the principles of HACCP (hazard analysis critical control points).
Do You Need to Keep Lots of Records?
The amount of documentation you need will be related to the type of food you prepare or handle and the risks presented by your business.
If you use the simple Safer Food, Better Business system of safe methods fact sheets and diary, you do not need to keep lots of records.
Once you have set the system up by working through the safe methods, you will have a record of what your business does to make sure the food is safe to eat. This will only need to be reviewed and amended if you change the way your food business operates.
After doing your regular checks, signing a diary sheet is the only daily record you usually need to complete. This should only take a couple of minutes each day. However, if something goes wrong in your business, you should write this in, with a note of how you put things right.
You should also review your diary every four weeks and when operations change, such as style of cooking or use of new equipment.
