The FSA collects annual data from Local Authorities (LAs) in England, Northern Ireland and Wales on food law enforcement in food establishments, and has published the report of data collected between April 2018 to end March 2019. Data are collected using the web-based LA Enforcement Monitoring System (LAEMS), and cover food hygiene (microbiological quality and contamination) and food standards (labelling, composition, chemical contamination and adulturation). For food standards controls, which cover authenticity and food fraud, the percentage of planned interventions decreased to 40.8 percent from 42.3 percent in the previous year. Even more significant, the number of food standards based analyses fell by 25% because of the lower number of food standards samples taken. LAs have commented that this decrease reflects the trend of an intelligence-led approach to food standards enforcement, concentrating on the higher risk premises. This approach is putting pressure on public analyst laboratories (official control laboratories) and the Worcester PA Laboratory will close at the end of 2019. 

Read the article here or the full FSA report

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