Tonight Catherine Brown from the Food Standards Agency is speaking at our annual meeting, these are some notes from her presentation:
Transparency.
Transparency is important.
The food hygiene ratings scheme is one example of transparency. Local Authorities judge and rate places and then that rating is available on our website. People can make informed choices about places based on this.
But is this enough for vulnerable eaters. The young, and elderly and infirm who may not have access to this information?
Another example of out transparency is our audit of slaughter houses and abattoirs across the country, both in terms of safety and animal welfare. and we now have an app that means to can scan the meat in a supermarket and see what abattoir the meat came from and what their ratings are to make informed choices.
The more consumers care about these ratings, the more attention suppliers will pay to them and this empowers the consumer to continue to make better choices and know they are better informed.