Scottish Food Enforcement Liaison Committee – 8 October 2015

Craig Brown as in the chair, 20 in attendance. Theme of the day was Food Crime.

Formation of the FSS Scottish Food Crime and Investigations Unit
Ron McNaughton, retired Police Officer, previously Fraud Squad and National Intelligence Bureau, now Interim Head of FSS Crime Unit.

What will FSS be doing?
On back of Horsegate came the recommendations from the Elliot and Scudamore reports.
Improved intelligence gathering, analysis and dissemination, improved collaborative working. (FSS cannot do all this on their own). Need to liaise with FSA.
Elliot suggested that in UK there was serious organised food crime. The University of Portsmouth has suggested the value of food crime in UK is £11bn. (Scotland could be 10% of this.) FSS intend to find out the full extent of the problem. Criminals infiltrate food businesses without them knowing it.
Incidence of crime involving vodka in Moray for example.
FSS need to improve the volume of intelligence. Need to make sure handled correctly or it will be the last they receive!
Aim of FSS Crime unit will be prevention and disruption on the following two fronts:-
– Serious / complex fraudulent conduct
– Serious / complex regulatory non compliance / dishonesty.

Local Authorities need to identify what the food crime issues are in Scotland and be intelligence led. Suggested a Food Crime Working group with LAs to ensure success. Challenge will be a culture change for LAs especially if Police are to be involved.

In an answer to question it would appear that switching ear tag numbers of animals would fall under the remit of the Crime Unit. Sheep rustling incidences would also be included. Ian McWatt pointed out that the penalties handed out to Horsegate offenders at £8000 was well below the rewards that these people must have gained.

Information sharing between Home Office and LA enforcement officers
Stephen Roarty, Home Office Immigration Enforcement (Scotland & Northern Ireland)
Restaurants, takeaways, food production are target areas for illegal immigrants gaining employment. Estimated huge tax avoidance in these businesses. Objectives:-
– Identify and remove failed asylum seekers
– Tackle illegal employment by fining or prosecuting employers. (Fines up to £20,000). Businesses dissolve the company and start up again to avoid this. H
– Remove 'high harm' cases first (those committing crime since arriving in this country)
– Deport any foreign nationals convicted of serious crimes in UK
– investigate abuse of the immigration rules (foreign students given permission to study at bogus colleges)

Information sharing between Police Scotland and LA enforcement officers
Joanne Lennie, Detective Sergeant specialising in organised crime. Serious and organised crime groups. (SOCG).
In 2009 230 SOCG in Scotland. (2 or more people working in an organised manner)
Mapping projects, scoring risks. Examines public contracts so that LAs do not award contracts to organised criminals.

Consultation on Street Traders
The Scottish Food Enforcement Liaison Committee (SFELC) believes that the guidance requires to be clarified in relation to the following:
SFELC strongly believes that the addition of the exemption for Category 2 units will cause the potential for inconsistencies within the enforcement community. Currently all fixed premises are required to have at least one sink and a separate wash hand basin. SFELC does not believe this should be any different for mobile traders, with perhaps the exemption of category 1 premises. SFELC is aware that many officers involved in food safety enforcement do not believe that the exemption to have a sink where a sufficient supply of utensils is provided is a workable situation.
The requirement to change protective clothing in 6.3.3 also needs to be clarified in relation to whether this always applies when doing different food operations or only if the PPE gets dirty.

SFELC is aware that in many local authorities mobile food vendors are currently rated for a risk such that their routine inspection frequency is greater than 12 months. The need to renew a certificate of compliance annually would therefore create a resource burden for both the food business and local authorities. SFELC accepts that it might be necessary to introduce this additional burden in order to instil confidence to the concept of a 'transferrable certificate of compliance'

SFELC also recognises that food authorities will want to satisfy themselves that food businesses operating in their area are operating hygienically and mobile food vendors operating in more than one authority would still be subject to multiple routine inspections based on a frequency determined by the Food Law Code of Practice risk rating scheme.

Regulatory Strategy for Food Standards Scotland Development
Driven by Scottish Government Better Regulation policy.

Food Standards Sub – Committees
Food Standards
Exemption from Nutritional information labelling for small/local traders
Concern was raised that we may not receive guidance until the Regulations come into force which is too late for most businesses, especially those producing a number of different products. LAs are reluctant to advise businesses to take action, if they then fall into the exemption. The Committee suggested that it might be worthwhile considering adopting the retail to retail exemption for small businesses (small, local and restricted). This to be discussed with Stephen Hendry at FSS.

Date of next meeting:
Friday 11 December 2015, Glasgow,