Food safety and animal feed incidents

A food incident happens when there are concerns about the safety of a food or animal feed product and action may need to be taken to protect people or animals. 

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 report unsafe food or feed to the relevant authorities, even if you no longer hold them. 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 there are concerns about the safety, quality or integrity of food or feed, that could need action to protect consumers.

The main categories of incidents are:

• contamination during processing, distribution, retail or catering
• incorrect food labelling - such as missing allergens on a food label
• environmental pollution - such as a fire or chemical or oil spills

Incidents are classified by potential impact as:

• 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• 'withdrawn' - removed from sales and taken off the shelves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.  

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. See what is a food incident.

You can report a food or animal feed incident to the Food Standards Agency (FSA) through their incident report form.

You can also contact the FSA Northern Ireland on Tel 0330 332 7149 or by email at fsa.incidentsni@food.gov.uk.

Food crime, which is fraud affecting the safety or authenticity of food, drink or animal feed, is different to food incidents. For more information, see how to report food fraud and read more about food crime.

Food crime is deliberate fraud in food, drink or feed supply chains. There are many different types of food crime, including:

• theft
• illegal processing
• adulteration or substitution
• waste diversion
• document fraud
• misrepresentation - ie marketing or labelling a product to wrongly portray its quality, safety, origin or freshness

Reporting food crime

If you are a whistleblower or a member of the public wishing to report a food crime, you can contact the National Food Crime Unit (NFCU) confidential hotline on Tel 0800 028 11 80.

Alternatively, you can report a food safety concern online.

Local authorities are responsible for cases of poor food hygiene where there is no deliberate dishonesty or intention to deceive customers.

If you decide to report food fraud by whistleblowing, public interest disclosure law protects you from unfair treatment from your employer.

If a food incident happens, you may need to recall or withdraw a food product. It is important to plan ahead and have procedures in place so you can act quickly if a recall or withdrawal is required. 

What are food withdrawals and recalls?

A withdrawal is when unsafe food is removed from the supply chain before it has reached consumers. 

A recall is when unsafe food is removed from the supply chain and consumers are advised to take appropriate action, for example, to return or dispose of the unsafe food.

Withdrawals and recalls guidance

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has produced guidance to explain what the law requires and what businesses need to do if they experience a food incident. The guidance includes advice and best practice on: 

• traceability systems  
• making a decision on carrying out a withdrawal or recall  
• roles and responsibilities
• how to inform consumers of a food recall

Find the FSA's guidance on food raceability, withdrawals and recalls within the UK food industry. Additional resources are also available to help you carry out a recall, including sample decision logs, notification templates, best practice examples and more.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) issues food alerts to warn about food safety risks. These alerts go to consumers, local councils and port authorities.

Types of food alert

There are different types of alerts:

• Food Alert for Action (FAFA) is issued where intervention by enforcement authorities is needed. These notices are often issued in conjunction with a product withdrawal or recall.
• Product Recall Information Notice (PRIN) makes the public aware an unsafe food product is being removed from the supply chain, and advises them to take appropriate action (for example, to return or dispose of the unsafe food).
• Allergy Alert (AA) tells the public that a product has missing or incorrect allergen labelling.

Businesses should check the FSA’s alerts regularly. You can also subscribe to get food and allergy alerts by email or text message.

Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed (RASFF)

The RASFF is an EU network for sharing urgent information about unsafe food or animal feed. EU member states use it to alert each other quickly about risks, such as contamination or unfit products, so they can take action like recalls.

The UK is no longer a full RASFF member but the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement sets up information exchange on food safety. The FSA receives relevant RASFF notifications in real time and turns them into UK-specific alerts, so UK businesses can see relevant threats without direct EU access.

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.