The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) and Food Standards Scotland (FSS) have published an extensive review of the UK and Scotland’s food standards, which is intended to be the first in a series of reports that will be published annually. The report describes the key changes in food standards from 2019 to 2021 and determines whether food in the UK is “fundamentally safe, nutritious, authentic, and what it claims to be” by examining data from local authorities, government statistics, compliance returns from import checks, and the FSA’s and FSS’ own research and surveillance activities. The report also assesses the enforcement of, and industry’s compliance to, UK food standards.
The report notes that, despite recent difficulties around the COVID-19 pandemic, Brexit, and the war in Ukraine, food standards in the UK have largely been upheld. However, the report also cautions that two main concerns may result in future challenges: the decrease in the number of inspections of food businesses caused by local authorities’ lack of resources, and the reduced ability to prevent the entry of unsafe food into the UK caused by a delay in establishing import controls for high-risk food and feed from the EU.