Food Hygiene and Safety
The Food, Health and Safety Enforcement Team enforces food hygiene and safety legislation, based on the Food Safety Act 1990 and a wide range of Regulations. We do this by inspecting every one of the 660 food premises in Torfaen on a five yearly risk based programme, with around 400 inspections each year. We also respond to hundreds of service requests each year, and take hundreds of food samples to check that the food produced or sold in Torfaen is safe.
Our Food Safety enforcement role includes
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Food Premises inspections
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Investigation of complaints about food
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Investigation of complaints about food premises
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Food sampling
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Food premises licensing and approvals
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Giving advice to new businesses
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Giving awards to the best premises in Torfaen
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Working in partnership with the Adult Education Section to provide a range of Food Hygiene Courses
If you want to know more about any of these subjects, please contact us. We have a wide range of leaflets and other information. Alternatively, visit our A-Z pages for more information about Food Hygiene| and Food Complaints|.
Our main customer for these services is the Government, who require us to provide most of these services by law, and give comprehensive instructions as to how the services should be delivered. The services are intended to protect anybody who consumes food made, stored or sold in the Torfaen area, and this will generally mean Torfaen residents, although food manufactured here is exported all over the world. The more direct customers for our services are anybody making a complaint or a request for services, and, of course, the businesses that are affected by our enforcement action.
The Food Standards Agency| oversees the work that we do, and you can compare our inspection rates etc with those of other local authorities by visiting their website.