Lawyers Working with Business

Lawyers Working with Business

Introduction

The small general purpose food shops operate under different regulators. There are various enforcement bodies who have the responsibility to regulate the food manufacturing businesses. These regulators include Food standard Agency(FSA), Department of Health and the Health and Safety Executive(HSE), and Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs(DEFRA). Apart from them, there are local level authorities responsible to regulate the small shops on local level.

Discussion

Key Regulator and its Requirements

The key regulator we have chosen is Food Standard Agency. The Food Standard Agency of UK work with local enforcement agencies to check whether the business are meeting the standards or not. The regulations include food hygiene and food safety criteria, labeling and packing criteria on pre-packed foods.

There are food hygiene regulations which are enforced by FSA. These regulations want business to done hazard analysis and implement such procedure which can identify, and control these hazards. Business also needs to find out the critical control points before putting in place such procedures based on Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points principles(HACCP). The hazards may include some kind bacteria present in the food in which case the foods will be heated to a specific temperature for a certain time so that any danger of food poisoning will be removed.

Why business needs to Manage Risk

All business activities involve some kind of risks. Business needs to manage risk in order to protect themselves from any kind of future hazards.

Strategies to Meet Regulatory Requirements

There are different strategies used to meet the regulatory requirements both by the regulators and the regulated. One of the traditional strategies is command and control system. In this approach, the State set targets and standards with sanctions to get the desired outcomes. Business operators are not responsible for meeting the regulatory requirements rather it was the job of the regulators to ensure compliance and risk management.

Market forces is also one of the instruments of regulatory strategies. These forces include competition, stakeholders, supply chain pressure etc. The presence of competition affects small business compliance strategy. These businesses may become rely on formal regulatory strategies making them less willing to carry out self regulation strategies. Compliance rate can also be affected by the supply chain. Large companies and suppliers may impose a contractual obligation on small retail shops.

In addition, the trend of regulation has moved towards using non-state actors to ensure compliance. One example of this kind of regulatory strategy is Self-regulation. The system of self regulation depends upon the business to manage the risk and comply with food hygiene safety. In this approach, government set the standards on a broader level which then will be the responsibility of the business to satisfy them. Business needs to develop rules and regulations themselves to comply with the standards. In case of non-achievement of standards, business needs to develop policies and procedures in order to deal with the non-compliance. The role of the regulator here is to analyse the efforts of business for self regulation. They can impose sanctions in case ...