Our food surveillance programmes help us get data about safety, compositional standards, and authenticity of food and feed in Scotland
In this section:
Food Standards Scotland uses surveillance to check that food and animal feed sold in Scotland is safe and meets quality standards. It also helps them spot any risks to our supply chains.
We created our surveillance strategy in 2016, based on earlier work by the Food Standards Agency in Scotland (FSAS). That work was done to respond to advice from the Scottish Government after the horsemeat scandal.
We have defined our approach to food surveillance as:
“"the on-going systematic collection, collation, analysis and interpretation of accurate information about a defined food or feed with respect to food safety or food standards, closely integrated with timely dissemination of that information to those responsible for control and prevention measures."
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The information we gather helps us assess risks, shape policies, and enforce food laws. This supports our consumer protection obligations of protecting public health and to achieve our vision for a safe, healthy and sustainable food environment that benefits and protects the health and well-being of everyone in Scotland.
We use many sources of information to identify risks and focus on issues that matter most to consumers and food businesses in Scotland. Our horizon scanning and food sampling programmes are key to collecting the data and evidence we need for our surveillance strategy.
