Food and feed incidents business guidance

Guidance for businesses about food and feed incidents

Four brown glass bottles on a production line. A worker is holding an iPad and checking them.

In this section

What is a food incident?

A food incident is defined as any event where there are concerns about actual or suspected threats to the safety, quality or integrity of food/feed that may need action to protect consumers’ interests.

The word ‘quality’ in this case includes standards, authenticity and composition. The term ‘food incident’ includes animal food, or ‘feed’ incidents.

When a food incident happens, the Scottish Food Crime and Incidents Unit (SFCIU) will support public bodies such as local authorities to protect the health of consumers.

Food incidents are split into two categories, which may overlap:

hazardous incidents are incidents involving (or suspected to involve) a food hazard, or the condition of any food, with the potential to cause an adverse effect on the health or safety of consumers (including outbreaks of foodborne disease and/or infectious intestinal disease)
non-hazardous incidents that do not have the potential to cause an adverse effect on the health or safety of consumers but may impact on the food supply chain
- these may include issues of quality, provenance, authenticity, composition, and the provision of food information

Within each of these categories there may be elements of dishonest intent, which therefore indicate the potential presence of food/feed fraud or, when present at a greater scale, food crime.

Reporting a food incident

Local authorities can use our online form to report a food incident to Food Standards Scotland. Consumers can report an incident by contacting the local authority.

You can also download the form and email it to incidents@fss.scot.

If out of hours, please follow up with a phone call to the out of hours phone number: 07881 516867.

Download the incident report form Report an incident to FSS using the online form

What do food businesses need to do when an incident happens?

When a food business operator has reason to believe that a food or feed incident has occurred, it is legally required to:

inform their local authority
inform Food Standards Scotland where relevant
withdraw the product if it has not yet reached the final consumer
recall the food product if it has reached the final consumer
notify their local authority when a product is withdrawn or recalled

When the food business operator informs the local authority of the incident, they will be able to advise of any action to be taken.

Some products may not meet food standards requirements but are still safe to consume. For example, where there is an error with labelling or quality. In this case, the food business operator may wish to withdraw the product to avoid the risk of prosecution.

Access our withdrawals and recalls guidance Read about food and feed law

Product withdrawals and recalls

When a food incident happens, a food product may have to be withdrawn or recalled. 

A withdrawal is when unsafe food is removed from the supply chain before it has reached consumers. 

A recall is when unsafe food is removed from the supply chain and consumers are advised to take appropriate action, for example to return or dispose of the unsafe food.

When a product needs to be recalled, we send out a product recall information notice (PRIN). We send PRINs to inform consumers via our website, text and email alerts service and notices displayed in stores.

When allergy information on food labels is missing or incorrect, the affected foods may need to be recalled or withdrawn from sale. When food is recalled due to allergen issues, we issue an allergy alert to inform consumers via our website, text and email alerts service and notices displayed in stores.

A food alert for action (FAFA) is issued when enforcement authorities need to intervene. These notices and alerts are often sent out along with a product withdrawal or recall.

Food alerts and notices

We send out information about food alerts and notices to let consumers and local authorities know about problems associated with food in Scotland.

We also work with the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to publish information about UK-wide alerts, withdrawals and recalls.

Email and text alerts

Our email and text alert service lets consumers know when products have been recalled from sale. This service is free and you can unsubscribe any time.

Preventing incidents

Our incident prevention strategic plan highlights five goals that we aim to achieve.

As part of this strategy we monitor food and feed safety patterns in Scotland. We also provide guidance and workshops to industry. We work closely with partners such as local authorities, Public Health Scotland (PHS), Food Standards Agency (FSA) and other government departments to make sure food incidents are managed effectively.

To help prevent incidents, food business operators can:

use trusted sources of raw materials and ingredients
conduct supplier audits
take part in assurance schemes
comply with food safety management standards
ask local authorities for advice

Preventing incidents on farms

View our advice related to: 

Root cause analysis to help prevent incidents

When a product is recalled because of a food incident, we recommend that the enforcement authority asks you to carry out a root cause analysis. The outcome of RCA is then used to identify common trends that will enable FSS to look at incident prevention initiatives.

These help businesses understand how and why a food incident happened, and therefore helps prevent future incidents.

To help you carry out root cause analysis in your food business, we've developed a root cause analysis e-learning course.

Read advice about Root Cause Analysis

Root Cause Analysis form

DOCX | 56KB

Root Cause Analysis - best practice example

PDF | 437KB

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