What the Agency does
Wednesday 9 March 2011
The Food Standards Agency is responsible for food safety and food hygiene across the UK. We work with local authorities to enforce food safety rules and have staff who work in UK meat plants to check that the requirements of the regulations are being met. We also commission research related to food safety.
If you have a food incident to report, the information you need is on the incident report form page.
You can get answers to several frequently asked questions at the links below or elsewhere on this website. If you are an enforcement official, please check our enforcement section before contacting us.
Where to go when we can't help
If you want to report an issue such as poor hygiene practice in a food outlet or mislabelling, you should contact your local authority. Local Environmental Health Officers usually handle complaints about food quality, hygiene and safety issues, while Trading Standards Officers deal with complaints about food labelling, compositional standards, ingredients, and weights and measures.
The Department of Health is responsible for nutrition policy, including nutrition labelling, in England. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is responsible for food labelling not related to food safety or nutrition in England. It is also responsible for animal welfare. The FSA retains responsibility for labelling policy in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and for nutrition policy in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Responsibility for nutrition policy in Wales lies with the Welsh Assembly Government.