Businesses both small and large have been caught inflating their food safety scores, leading to renewed calls for a mandatory scheme and well-resourced regulation. By David Burrows.
Food businesses have been displaying inaccurate food hygiene ratings, according to an undercover BBC investigation.
Secret recordings captured small local restaurants and a leading supermarket chain misleading customers with inaccurate Food Standards Agency (FSA) ratings, in what is being reported as “a nationwide problem”.
The findings have led to renewed calls for the ratings scheme to become mandatory. Under the FSA’s current food hygiene ratings scheme (FHRS) businesses are ranked from zero to five, with those scoring below three described as “in need of improvement”. The scores are available online through the FSA’s database but displaying the score publicly remains voluntary in England and Scotland.
“Everyone deserves to feel confident that the food they and their families consume is safe,” said Chris Elliott, professor of food safety at Queen’s University Belfast and vice president at the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH), which has for years led calls for mandating the display of food hygiene ratings in England.
The investigation comes at a time when inspection teams are under-resourced and face backlogs. This has led to the FSA pushing a lighter touch approach to wider food safety regulation among large retailers, with reduced inspections and more reliance on audits conducted for the businesses.
The BBC visited dozens of food establishments in east London, following tip-offs that many were using dubious hygiene ratings. A number of local cafés and restaurants pointed reporters to the ratings in their windows despite their actual scores being far lower.
Bigger companies were found to be at fault too. A Sainsbury’s store in Leyton for example had a ‘five’ rating in the window but its official rating is ‘zero’. Inspectors found serious pest control issues at the shop, according to a report seen by the BBC following a freedom of information request. “Allergen labelling was not available for some products on display – posing a risk to customers with food allergies,” the BBC reported.
Sainsbury’s said it had since removed the outdated ratings and improved its score at the store to three. Whether this is now displayed in its window is unclear.
A BBC investigation in July warned that consumers are being “exposed to an increased risk of food poisoning because of delays in food hygiene inspections”. Its analysis showed one in five restaurants and takeaways had not been seen by food inspectors for more than two years.
Safety first
The BBC’s latest investigation follows the launch of a new FSA campaign last month that called on more businesses to display their ratings online. Research showed that only around one in 10 businesses were displaying a food hygiene rating online; this was despite the fact that around two-thirds of businesses agreed that displaying a food hygiene rating resulted in more customers (England: 73%; Northern Ireland: 66%; Wales: 65%) and that the rating improves business reputation (England 95%; Northern Ireland 91%; Wales 88%).
“It’s good business sense to display a hygiene rating online and it’s reassuring for consumers that they can see the hygiene rating clearly when ordering their food,” said FSA head of the food hygiene rating scheme Jesse Williams.
FSA research also shows that the rating scheme is driving up food hygiene standards and increasing compliance with food hygiene laws. However, some experts took to social media to suggest compliance in England has fallen compared to improvements where schemes are mandatory.
In Wales and Northern Ireland, businesses must display their hygiene ratings on site.
In England, this remains voluntary, and as result 69% of businesses display a food hygiene rating sticker, compared to 91% in Northern Ireland and 92% of businesses in Wales. Since the introduction of mandatory display of FHRS in Wales, businesses with a rating of 5 have gone up by 21 percentage points for example.
The Food Hygiene Rating (Wales) 2013 Act and the Food Hygiene Rating Act 2016 (Northern Ireland) also make it an offence to display an incorrect rating and give local authorities the power to take action against businesses if they fail to provide the correct rating information when asked by a customer.
In Scotland, all food outlets have to have a food hygiene inspection, which is undertaken by the local authority. Following this inspection the food outlet will be given a food hygiene information scheme (FHIS) rating based on their inspection result. Businesses are marked either with a ‘pass’ or ‘improvement required’ (they didn’t meet the legal requirements).
The FSA said “mandatory display requires legislation and is an objective in our corporate plan”.
More businesses are taking steps to ensure consumers have access to this information when they purchase food online. The three market leaders, Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat, have signed up to an aggregators food safety charter by which they will only accept registered food businesses onto their platforms and require a minimum FHRS rating (currently two for Deliveroo and UberEats, and three for JustEat, out of five). All three now display FHRS ratings to customers, and both Deliveroo and JustEat allow customers to filter restaurants by FHRS ratings. They have also all committed to use their channels to share food safety information and guidance, and to work with restaurants to support customers with food hypersensitivities.
The FSA wants more businesses to engage with the charter to help assure that food sold online meets the required standards, however it has not yet been able to bring the big online marketplaces like Facebook and eBay into the fold.
