Jersey’s current food safety laws were drawn up in 1966 and, according to the department, are not based around modern cooking practices and are no longer up to scratch.
The new law, which is currently being drafted, will allow Environmental Health officers to serve enforcement notices on businesses that breach the rules, stop them from operating and force companies to give their staff food safety training.
Stewart Petrie, director of Environmental Health, explained why a new law was needed.
‘The current 1966 food law is really outdated and does not include anything about modern cooking practices such as microwaving and boiling food in a bag,’ he said.
‘The new law will allow us to serve enforcement notices which will say “you must do X, Y and Z in a certain number of days or we will do X”.’
Mr Petrie added that his department’s powers were currently limited and it was sometimes difficult to get a business to clean up its act.
‘At the moment, we just send out a stern letter to businesses but they can just ignore it,’ he said.
‘If we deem that there is an immediate risk to health we can go to a Jurat and ask for a notice to close them down. The only problem with that is that there is quite a high bar that we need to reach.
‘A lot of the time we can ask them to close down voluntarily, get them to scrub their premises within an inch of its life or do whatever needs doing and then let them reopen.’
The director added that the new law would also allow them to ensure that businesses properly train their staff in food hygiene practices.
He also said that it would help Jersey food exporters show their overseas customers that their products had had to comply with stringent standards.
‘We also have to meet a lot of EU standards when it comes to products that we export from Jersey to let buyers know that Jersey’s laws meet their laws,’ he said.
‘For example, for our dairy exports to Hong Kong and Korea we have to certify that everything is up to standard before it leaves the Island.’
Local food businesses are being consulted on the new law. It is hoped that it will come into force in 2019 but it is thought that it may be delayed by legislation being drawn up in the run-up to Britain leaving the EU.
