The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has published an interim update on its cutting plants and cold stores review and outlined the priority areas for phases two and three.
On 1st February 2018, FSA and Food Standards Scotland (FSS) announced they would be undertaking a UK wide review of cutting plants and cold stores, in the wake of non-compliances identified at some cutting plants.
The terms of reference were published on 2nd March 2018 outlining the scope, objectives, deliverables, approach and timescales for this review.
The review has undertaken a preliminary assessment of the skills and experience requirements across FSA/FSS, including service delivery partners and some of the initial findings are outlined in a summary available online.
Any issues identified in other related parts of the sector will be raised as recommendations for further work in the review report to be submitted to FSA/FSS Boards in September 2018.
The review is being delivered over three phases.
Phase one up to June 2018 focused on current state arrangements, comparison of arrangements in place for four countries (Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England) and emerging areas for improvement.
Phase two from June to September 2018 will validate findings, explore the implications these have for food businesses and work with the sector to identify and assess options for improvement, develop recommendations, and prepare an implementation delivery plan.
Phase three from October onwards will complete the design and implementation of the delivery plan.
In Great Britain and Northern Ireland, there are 1,713 approved cutting plant and cold store establishments, 33% are both cutting plants and cold stores, 45% are cold stores only and 22% are cutting plants only.
To view the full summary of the review so far, click here.
This story was originally published on a previous version of the Meat Management website and so there may be some missing images and formatting issues.
