When it comes to food safety, compliance is the key to success

If there are two words which immediately strike the fear of God into any food business owner, they are probably ‘enforcement order’.

This year has officially gone down as one of the worst years on record for enforcement orders served to restaurants, cafés, takeaways and quick service counters throughout the country.

According to the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI), there have been 108 closure orders, two improvement orders and 16 prohibition orders on Irish food premises so far this year, totalling 124 enforcement orders (that’s not counting the month of December).

In 2023, 92 enforcement orders were served. Previously, the years 2013 and 2019 had the highest number of enforcement orders on record.

Dr Bernard Hegarty is director of enforcement policy for the FSAI. He tells Irish Country Living that the increase in enforcement orders is likely down to a combination of reasons.

“In some ways, this increase can be attributed to the return from COVID-19 to more normal trading conditions,” he says. “Also, the number of food outlets is increasing, more or less, in line with population growth.”

Closure orders

Each month, the FSAI publishes a press release with listed enforcement orders, including names of the food businesses, which enforcement order they have been served and details on what occurred. Immediate closure orders are served for reasons like rat infestations, rodent droppings, drain flies and persistent failure to comply with food safety law.

With the increase in operating costs for food businesses in recent years, perhaps some elements of food safety compliance could be missed by business owners due to stress or lack of funds. Bernard says, however, there is no direct evidence that the 2024 number of enforcement orders is connected to financial pressures.

“When an inspector – generally an Environmental Health Officer [EHO] from the HSE – walks into a premises and sees gross deficiencies requiring immediate action, they don’t usually know why the business has let things get to that state,” he explains.

“It could be a cost saving effort, but if so, it’s a very short-sighted measure by the food business. With the investment you’d be making in keeping the premises clean, training staff and ensuring a pest-free environment, you could save money in short term.

“But if you’re shut down, you lose all of your income and the trust of your customer. If you don’t have that trust, it’s very hard to come back from that.”

While it has been a bad year for enforcement orders Bernard says that overall, this is still a relatively low amount respective to the total number of food businesses in Ireland today.

If you’re shut down, you lose all of your income and the trust of your customer. If you don’t have that trust, it’s very hard to come back from that

“For context, about 52,000 food businesses are under supervision of the various state agencies that look after the food chain and protect our health,” he says.

“For numbers served, if we’re looking at 124, that’s still quite a small proportion of those. The industry as a whole shouldn’t be tarred with that brush.”

If enforcement orders are served to such a small percentage of our overall food businesses, why such fanfare each month when the list of enforcement orders is released? Do we secretly enjoy naming and shaming, or does this monthly airing of dirty laundry serve a wider purpose?

“As opposed to naming and shaming, I prefer to see it as things to avoid; particularly as we give the details of these orders,” Bernard says. “Businesses can see that these are the kinds of practises which get cited in enforcement orders [and avoid making similar mistakes].”

Support

It has been 25 years since the establishment of the FSAI, which was set up as part of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland Act 1998 and came into effect on 1 January 1999.

In this time, and aside from overseeing and enforcing food safety law, the FSAI has also worked to support Irish food producers, restaurants and businesses.

“There is a whole section of our website called ‘Business Advice’,” says Bernard. “It includes various aspects of starting and running a food business. The newest thing on offer is our online learning portal, which is proving popular. It’s a variety of resources written in very user-friendly ways and produced in snippets, so any business can build them into their own training models – and it’s free.”

FSAI also regularly engages with industry stakeholders. The food landscape of Ireland has changed considerably over the past 25 years, and it is only natural that food safety legislation has also required updating and modernising.

“We need to keep up to date,” says Bernard. “We have staff with specialist interests and we engage with developments in Europe – this is all so we can keep an eye on the future. There are always trends and fashions in food you need to keep abreast of. Right now, in particular, we are focusing on food delivery and e-commerce.

“We want to engage with the sector to discover any issues arising in this space, because this is increasingly the means in which consumers are engaging with food businesses.”

With the future still in mind, on 3 December, the FSAI released its new strategy for 2025-29 which aims to ensure the food safety regulatory system is equipped to respond to any challenges within the increasingly globalised food supply chain.

Among other elements of the plan, they intend to roll out targeted supports for businesses to help with compliance and make greater use of technology to assist with communications.

See fsai.ie

Read more

Dinnéar na Nollag

Combining the worlds of food, hospitality and art in truly unique and wonderful