Food safety and animal feed incidents

Businesses must ensure safe food practices concerning their products, premises and working conditions.

This is the best way to prevent cases of food crime and minimise food and feed incidents.

Responsibility of food and feed businesses

Food and feed business operators in Northern Ireland must comply with the relevant hygiene regulations. They must put in place a food hygiene system based on the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) principles. 

HACCP advises you to:

• conduct a hazard analysis
• identify critical control points
• set monitoring for critical control points
• establish critical limits
• plan corrective actions
• keep relevant records
• establish procedures for ensuring the HACCP system is working as intended

With these procedures in place, you can set up critical control points, or key actions that can be taken to prevent further hazards. Use the Food Standards Agency's (FSA) safe catering pack for small businesses.

If a food or feed safety incident occurs

Where you have experienced a food or feed safety incident, you should conduct a root cause analysis (RCA) to understand how and why it happened. It will help you identify actions to prevent future incidents.

You can use the results of the RCA to review how you manage food safety and hygiene in your food business. This includes traceability, withdrawal and recall of unsafe food. 

To help businesses understand RCA, the FSA has developed a Root Cause Analysis e-learning course.