Environmental Health

Food Safety

CookSafe

In 2004 Food Standards Agency Scotland drawing on expertise from the food industry including small businesses, local authorities and the Scottish Food Advisory Committee developed a food management system named 'CookSafe' for caterers and subsequently a system named 'RetailSafe' for retailers.

These systems are designed to help catering and retail businesses understand and implement a HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point ) - based system which has been required by law since January 2006. By reading the specific manual and following the instructions, businesses are able to develop HACCP-based procedures that fit their needs.

The same year, to ease the introduction of the new law, the Food Standards Agency Scotland offered funding to enable local authorities to provide free training to businesses prior to the requirement coming into force. This funding continued for two years until 2006.

In South Ayrshire Environmental Health targeted 235 businesses to be trained and mentored using Paragon Training, an external consultant.

Over the two years of the project the training successfully trained 304 businesses being 30% over our initial target. The feedback from the businesses involved and our enforcement officers was very positive.

Although the training project has been completed we still offer free advice on CookSafe and RetailSafe and distribute the CookSafe system on CD disk or hard copy folder. The RetailSafe system is only available in hard copy folder.