Summary of the UK 2021 food report
FSA has released their annual food standards report reviewing food industry trends and changes after the pandemic and the Brexit, here are the impacts on your business:
Since the beginning of COVID-19, in conjunction with the departure from the EU, the UK’s food system was greatly affected in many aspects, including food and feed safety, restaurant compliance and imported food monitoring.
Every country possesses it’s own food safety standards, and has potential food dangers when imported or exported. The summary of the Food Standards Agency (FSA) Report 2021 contains:
The Nation’s Plate
Data shows that over the past ten years, the nation’s nutrient intake stayed consistent, but although the sugar intake decreased overall, consumers eat more than the recommended dosage with about 28% of England adults living with obesity as of 2019. The average weight of adult-age Brits increased with the lack of physical activity and the change in the way adults ate throughout the pandemic – showing an overindulgence in sugar-filled and fatty foods and not enough portions of fibers, fruits, vegetables and fish. But who is responsible for this?
Average consumption of free sugars as a proportion of daily total energy (2020)
Source: Public Health England NDNS: Diet and physical activity – a follow-up study during COVID-19
Average daily saturated fat consumption as a proportion of daily total energy (2020)
Source: Public Health England NDNS: Diet and physical activity – a follow-up study during COVID-19
According to research from the FSA and FSS’s (The UK Public’s Interests, Needs and Concerns Around Food research), 22% of people in the UK order from takeout and 23% order delivery services at least once a week – mostly coming from young adults or those from higher income households.
The factors found to influence our food choices in recent years according to this data include:
- The price of food: Healthy foods are “priced out” for most people and difficult to keep both wallet and body healthy
- Health concerns: After education over the years, 49% of people interviewed alerted to avoid food with trans fats, palm oil, preservatives, or E numbers
- Eating trends: More people are turning to a “flexitarian” diet to reduce their meat intake
- Ethical concerns: the treatment of animals in the food chain would be a factor of not eating meats; the plastic waste would be another key factor in environmental concern
Impacts from the pandemic on food consumption choices:
- Having healthy eating is tougher to the consumers due to their financial situations
- The pandemic allows more people to cook at home and have healthier options
- Consumers tended to eat more snacks during the lockdown
- More online grocery shopping
Public priorities for the future (research from The FSA and FSS’s The UK Public’s Interests, Needs and Concerns Around Food research) include:
Priority 1: Ensure equitable access to healthy, safe, and affordable foods
- More people intend to purchase healthier foods with an affordable price
Priority 2: Maintain & strengthen food safety and hygiene standards:
- 43% of consumers enforce clearer labelling of food ingredients and allergens is the key priority
Priority 3: Act on additives and processed foods
- People are aware that unhealthy foods contain trans fats, palm oil, preservatives, or E numbers
(Download the full report from the FSA for more priorities, or request demo here for enhancing your business)
Going global:
% of total UK imports sourced from the EU and from other regions, 2017-21
- Around 40 million tons of food are imported from abroad every year; the EU remains by far the biggest supplier, accounting for over 90% of all beef, dairy, eggs, and pork products imported into the UK and nearly two-thirds (65%) of all food and feed not of animal origin
- Despite recent volatility in import patterns, there are no signs of any immediate or wholesale shift in trading flows following the UK’s departure from the EU, though EU imports of fish, lamb and mutton, and pork have all fallen between 2019 and 2021.
- Although there is no evidence that the standards of EU imports have fallen, the FSA and FSS believe the current situation does reduce our ability to prevent foods that do not meet the UK’s high standards from being placed on our market. The lack of import controls means we are not receiving official assurance from the exporting country that imports meet the UK’s high food and feed safety standards; the absence of border checks could also affect how we identify and respond to safety risks in future, with additional resource required by the UK to maintain levels of food safety assurance for these imports
The impact of EU departure on import controls:
- The protocols on Ireland/Northern Ireland took effect on 1 January 2021 and requires Northern Ireland to apply EU import requirements on any products entering the EU regulatory zone from outside the EU
- Not receiving official assurance from the exporting countries that those imports meet the UK’s high food and feed safety standards
To keep rapid alerts available from the latest news from the world, Safefood 360° RISK provides alert system to monitor. Safefood 360° RISK combines both RASFF and World Bank data for the most up to date news and risk alerts and monitor safety alerts worldwide.
Safe and Sound:
- There are 2,363 reported food incidents in the UK in 2021, down from 2019 (2,598) but remains similar number to 2020 (2,261).
- Contamination by harmful micro-organisms was the most frequently reported hazard: 584 cases (browse our technical datasheet to understand how to prevent the harm from the hazards)
- There have been increasing numbers in incidents involving poultry meat in the UK from 2019 – 2021 (83 to 238 cases); especially seen in Salmonella in breaded chicken (download our datasheet about the Salmonella to know the prevention of it)
- Dietetic food incidents have nearly doubled since the previous year (128 cases to 207)
Total number of product recall information notices issued in the UK
Source: FSA/FSS Incident Management Systems
There are 59 cases of recall in the UK in 2021.
Once the food incident has been identified, the food product may have to be withdrawn or recalled, not only costing food businesses money and reputation, but also directly affects the public’s health.
Most of the incidents can be avoided by the good management procedure (HACCP) and by managing the food process with Safety plan management solution. Request a demo to learn more about how Safefood 360° helps you to reduce the chances of food related incidents.
Informing Consumers
The UK’s departure from the EU prompted a series of actions designed to minimise disruption, including new legislation, changes to compositional standards and origin labelling. A new UK Nutrition and Health Claims Committee (UKNHCC) has also been established to provide expert advice and scrutiny on food marketing claims. Existing arrangements remain in Northern Ireland under the terms of the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland.
The food labelling must contain the information below:
- Name and description
- Ingredients list
- Nutritional information
- Best before or use by date
- Warnings if the food contains additives such as caffeine
- Places of Origin
Food Labels
Source: Our Food 2021, FSA report
From a consumer’s point of view, this has had very little noticeable impact to date – the immediate focus has been on maintaining continuity with existing EU laws to minimise any disruption to the supply chain. However, for food business owners, some important foundations for a post-EU approach to food information standards have been put in place:
- Food law changes into British law
- Removing mutual recognition of food composition standards from 1 Oct 2022
- Changes to address and country of origin labelling
What if you have over 500 products in your food business? Our Food Safety Management Solution is designed to improve your business processes within the food industry, allowing you to easily pass audits and maintain compliance with GFSI recognised food safety standards. Browse our Food Safety Management Solution to learn how it helps your business and your supplier chain.
If you are ready to learn more now, request a demo with one of our food safety experts.
Keeping It Clean
The current level of legal compliance with hygiene standards across food and feed businesses in the UK:
Keeping to monitor the latest legilastion is not easy. Safefood 360° provides an integrated platform for your food safety management and supplier quality management. The software is built by a group of food experts to customise what you really need to secure the assurance and make your aduit become easy. If you have any questions about your current FSMS, SQMS or RISK Assessment systems, submit a demo request for a professional consultation to get your business into next level.
Safefood 360 Customer Story – Iman Casing
in blogIn March 2012 Iman Casing opened its doors to Safefood 360′s digital media crew to film the production of pure natural sausage casing. This short video provides fascinating insight into the manufacturing process and shows how three Syrian brothers have built Iman to be the premier casing supplier in Europe from their base on the west coast of Ireland.
Unlike artificial sausage casing, natural casings are derived from the intestinal tract of farmed animals and are primarily used in organic sausage production. Traditionally the intestines of pigs, sheep, goats and cattle were flushed, scraped and cleaned by hand. More recently, newer machinery has been used for large scale production enabling sausage producers to achieve scales of efficiencies in their processing plants. Processors of natural casings have developed long-stranded casings with uniformity and strength to support this new technology, as well as new tubing (Shirring) systems that speed up the stuffing process. This has revolutionized the sausage manufacturing world and kept natural casings preferred by many manufacturers and consumers.
New Report Features – the truth about reporting
in Product UpdatesLet’s be honest for a moment! If you are a food safety manager, technologist or consultant responsible for maintaining a food safety system you will be familiar with the scenario whereby in the days leading up to your certification audit you engage in the almost masochistic exercise of catching up on months of reports and trending data to ensure the requirements of the auditor are met. I know this because I worked in this role for many years…
It’s not that we are doing anything wrong. It’s just the nature of the job and the pressures of staying on top of increasing demands. In fact, you would have to search far and wide to find a food safety manager who does not want to have at hand up-to-date quality reports and trend data. Why? Because in the long term it makes our job easier. When a management system yields improvements (large or small) then the food safety manager feels they have done their job and made a valuable and valued contribution.
So what is the problem? Well it is simple and universally known throughout the world of food safety. 95% of all food businesses operate a manual paper based system. While they get the job done they do not by their nature produce any meaningful data to drive improvement. They simply record compliance. In order to extract the enormous potential value of the data a significant effort is required which is usually gobbled up by the day to day job.
So when it came to developing our reports feature for Safefood 360 we gave ourselves a number of objectives. Reports needed to be:
To achieve the above we spoke to our existing users and referred to the technical standards. The result – over 250 one-click reports covering everything from reports by number, registers, parato analysis, pest control trending, micro trending and many, many more. The following video gives a brief overview of the scope and feel of reports available.
Let’s be honest for a moment! If you are a food safety manager, technologist or consultant responsible for maintaining a food safety system you will be familiar with the scenario whereby in the days leading up to your certification audit you engage in the almost masochistic exercise of catching up on months of reports and trending data to ensure the requirements of the auditor are met. I know this because I worked in this role for many years…
It’s not that we are doing anything wrong. It’s just the nature of the job and the pressures of staying on top of increasing demands. In fact, you would have to search far and wide to find a food safety manager who does not want to have at hand up-to-date quality reports and trend data. Why? Because in the long term it makes our job easier. When a management system yields improvements (large or small) then the food safety manager feels they have done their job and made a valuable and valued contribution.
So what is the problem? Well it is simple and universally known throughout the world of food safety. 95% of all food businesses operate a manual paper based system. While they get the job done they do not by their nature produce any meaningful data to drive improvement. They simply record compliance. In order to extract the enormous potential value of the data a significant effort is required which is usually gobbled up by the day to day job.
So when it came to developing our reports feature for Safefood 360 we gave ourselves a number of objectives. Reports needed to be:
To achieve the above we spoke to our existing users and referred to the technical standards. The result – over 250 one-click reports covering everything from reports by number, registers, parato analysis, pest control trending, micro trending and many, many more. The following video gives a brief overview of the scope and feel of reports available.
Things have changed at radical pace since I was a food technologist generating all these reports manually. I remember when spread sheets first appeared. They went from being a mild curiosity to being an essential tool. At the very least they cut down on the number of errors and generated decent looking graphs. We are now in the age of the Cloud and Software as a Service (SaaS). This is where technology changes the game. Our new reports section is not just a useful feature but is in fact a living and breathing entity. Because the solution is web based we can update and add (within hours) new and better reports. And we will. Coming soon will be our Executive Summary reports which will be present in each module. This will allow our users to generate management reports for review meetings within seconds.
Now back to the subject of honesty. Software is a tremendous tool for the management of standardized systems like those found in food safety. It will not cure all ills since records still need to be entered. However when these tools allow you to extract management information with literally one click of a button (on the day of the audit if necessary) then we are adding value through our work and better still, avoiding the last minute, pre-audit frenzy.
Happy reporting…
New BRC Requirements for Cleaning
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