Food Safety
- Food Safety Tips
- Our role
- Our aims
- Food hygiene and standards inspections
- Investigation of food complaints
- News from Environmental Health and Trading Standards
- Training Courses
- Contact the Food Safety Team
Food Safety Tips
- Take food safety to heart
- Always wash your hands after handling raw meat and poultry
- Take time and make sure all your food is thoroughly cooked
- Make sure you give yourself ample time to prepare and cook the festive meals
- Keep any leftovers, covered, in the fridge
- Reheat food properly until it is piping hot
- Follow the manufacturer’s instructions when cooking
- Never put raw meat alongside ready-to-eat foods like cold meats and salads
Tips for healthier catering for businesses
- Healthier catering tips for food businesses in Haringey (PDF, 160KB)
- Please also visit the Healthier Catering Commitment website (external link)
Our role
Some of the functions that Environmental Health Officers (EHOs) carry out to ensure that food is safe for sale include
- food hygiene and standards inspections and registration of all food businesses
- food safety: hygienic premises and practices
- advising on food hazard analysis
- food standards: labelling and quality
- Health and Safety at Work in food premises for staff and members of the public
- advice and Training Courses on food safety matters for the public and for people setting up new businesses
- routine sampling of foods to monitor safety and standards
- responding to complaints about food safety
Our aims
To protect consumers by:
- working in partnership with local people and businesses;
- ensuring that all food sold, imported, produced, stored, handled or distributed commercially within or from Haringey, is:
- prepared in clean premises which are operated by properly trained staff
- wholesome and lawful
- safe to eat.
For all premises selling or manufacturing food and/or drink registration is required with the council's Food Safety Team.
Food hygiene and standards inspections
Specialist Food Safety Officers inspect all food premises within the borough to ensure that businesses comply with strict Food Safety Standards.
Food hygiene inspection
The purpose of a food hygiene inspection is to ensure that food sold to the public is safe to consume. Additionally, EHOs will visit many premises when following up complaints, and will visit any new premises that open in the borough.
EHOs will not only ensure that the structure, fittings and operators in food businesses do not contaminate foodstuffs, but will also assess the risks involved in storing, preparing and producing food.
Inspection intervals depend on the risk associated with the particular business, which in turn depends on the kind of business (eg. a restaurant poses a higher potential risk than a shop selling only packaged food) and the condition of the business itself, including how competent the operators are, as assessed by the inspector at every visit. Inspection intervals range from every six months (highest risk) to every five years (lowest risk).
Following inspections, satisfaction questionnaires are occasionally sent to inspected businesses, so that we can evaluate the service we provide and make improvements where necessary.
The most common reason for food poisoning occurring is food being prepared too far in advance and being left at room temperature for too long, allowing food poisoning bacteria to grow in the food. Where there is an imminent risk to the public health, EHOs can immediately close food businesses until such times as they are considered safe, when they will allow them to reopen.
Food standards inspection
The purpose of a food standards inspection is to ensure that the label on the food product accurately describes the food and its content. Environmental Health Officers often take food samples and have them chemically analysed to ensure that the composition of the food is as the label states.
Investigation of food complaints
Despite the routine inspection of food businesses and the sampling of foods, there are occasions when things do go wrong and food becomes contaminated. Following a complaint of contaminated food an Officer of this Department will carry out an investigation to find the reason for and source of the contamination. Various parties, including retailers, wholesalers, producers, manufacturers and other Local Authorities may be contacted. For more information, please read the food poisoning page.
We investigate complaints and reports about:
- unsatisfactory food, including national Food Alerts
- unsatisfactory food premises
- health and safety in food premises
- accidents in food premises
- food poisoning cases and incidents.
News from Environmental Health and Trading Standards
Please visit our News from Environmental Health and Trading Standards page for the latest news and information on what we are doing.
Training Courses
We also provide the following food hygiene course:
- Foundation Certificate in Food Safety, Level 2 - Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (CIEH) Accredited
- Fees - the course will cost £80.30 per person. Important: concessionary rates are not available for this course
Please visit our Foundation Certificate in Food Safety (Level 2) page for more information. To apply please complete our online form:
Contact
Food Safety Team
Commercial Environmental Health
Level 4 - Alexandra House
10 Station Road
Wood Green
N22 7TR
- Tel 020 8489 1000
- Contact us online
| Filename | Filetype | Size |
|---|---|---|
| Food and feed law enforcement plan 2023-24 | 559.03 KB | |
| Food Sampling Policy.pdf | 65.1 KB | |
| Commercial Environmental Health and Trading Standards service standards | 231.65 KB |