‘Food businesses will find themselves in hot water if they don’t act quickly to implement necessary FIR changes’

17-Mar-2015 - Last updated on 17-Mar-2015 at 13:23 GMT

Roythornes law firm has quizzed members of the Fresh Produce Consortium, The Food and Drink Forum, the British Frozen Food Federation, the Artisan Food Trail and Tastes of Anglia about meeting Food Information Regulations (FIR) requirements.

The results show over a quarter of respondents (27%) felt unprepared for the regulations, the first phase of which came into force in December last year, and a quarter are yet to train their employees on FIR.

Out-of-house expertise

32% of those surveyed said interpreting the regulation was the biggest challenge and relied on out-of-house expertise.

“The survey results are as expected. We fully anticipated businesses would struggle interpreting the regulations and many would spend more than planned on implementing the changes,” said Peter Bennett, head of food and drink, Roythornes.

“There was always going to be problems with these changes as adequate information was a long time coming. And when it arrived there were still inconsistencies and grey areas.

“Meeting the requirements of legislation like this requires time and information. In future, the Government would be advised to provide more information thoroughly to support the food industry. There is always more room for liaison with trade bodies, they know what issues their members face and can spot issues early on in the process.”

Bennett added there was a lot of feedback from industry professionals regarding the survey, one respondent said he was: “still receiving a lot of queries about interpretation, particularly in the supply chain. Over the next year there will be a lot of discussions about inconsistent labelling by FBO's and inconsistent interpretation and enforcement by Local Regulators.”

Another said some retailers left things very late and there was ‘a stress’ to rush through the necessary changes.

52% said the costs were higher than expected

“It was worth noting that where retailers sub-contracted the work out to third parties, this from my experience was not good. It added further complications and made changes and approvals of artworks very slow and more room for errors.”

Other comments added: “Being mainly a PL manufacturer it is/was a challenge to phase the change through the business in terms of new packaging material versus old.”

Or; “A very expensive exercise made more expensive by the tight time line. Significant cost for SMEs to absorb.”

And: “We are a label company and have found the majority of our customers have not implemented label change in time for the FIR regulations. This is despite us informing customers to act early. We still have customers who have not implemented the change and labels will not be ready on time.”

The research indicates nearly two thirds of food and drink producers relied on Government websites as their main source of guidance and 72% of businesses used in-house resources to make all the required changes rather than recruiting or consulting specialists.

In addition, 52% of the participants stated the costs associated with implementing the required changes were higher than expected and over half needed more six months to meet the regulations.

“It isn’t likely that anything other than an improvement notice will be issued to a company that has not implemented the changes at this stage as it’s too soon for serious action,” said Bennett.

“That being said, non-compliance with an improvement notice is an offence in itself and food businesses will quickly find themselves in hot water should they not act quickly to implement necessary changes.”

“Information and guidance on meeting the FIR is now widely available, if businesses have the necessary expertise to implement the requisite changes then they should use them quickly. There are a raft of consultancies and legal service providers that can support food businesses through the change, this needs to be done quickly.”