Food hygiene regulation and enforcement policy in the UK: the underlying philosophy and comparisons with occupational health and safety law

Editor’s preface

Dr Michael Howard is a Lecturer in Environmental Health at King’s College London specializing in environmental health law and compliance strategies.

He has undertaken a considerable amount of research into occupational health and safety, and food hygiene regulation. He is particularly interested in the approaches that regulators and enforcement agencies can use to promote an understanding and consensus with businesses that need to comply with the law.

In this paper he proposes and argues that the philosophy of self-regulation, which underpins occupational health and safety legislation in the UK, is adopted for food hygiene legislation. This notion will undoubtedly be opposed by some and alternative views on this subject are welcomed, particularly from outside the UK.

This paper suggests that there is no specific underlying philosophy for food hygiene law in the UK. It describes the philosophy of self-regulation which underlies UK occupational health and safety law, and addresses the question of why this has not been adopted for food law. The paper also describes the recent and continuing developments in food law, some of which move towards a self-regulatory approach. It is argued that a self-regulatory approach would provide a more appropriate form of regulation than the command and control approach which is currently applied. A major benefit of this would be that self-regulatory systems are likely to be more effective in controlling food safety management failures, the most common cause of food borne disease. Furthermore, this would remove the inconsistency that exists at present between the food hygiene and occupational health and safety regulatory systems. It is argued that a consistent regulatory approach would benefit duty holders and enforcement agencies. It is suggested that the main reasons for the absence of a clear philosophical basis for UK food safety law are historical.