Complaining about food products
This page provides information and advice on complaining about food products.
Our Environmental Health Officers and Surrey County Council's Trading Standards Officers enforce food law to protect the public.
Food manufacturers and retailers usually have a Food Safety Management System which is intended to ensure that safe, good quality food is consistently produced and sold to the customer.
The odd unsatisfactory product may escape detection and this is accepted within the law as long as the manufacturer or retailer is doing everything reasonable to prevent a defective product.
Not all unsatisfactory products pose a health risk. The examples of common food complaints page, gives explanations and suggestions for the most suitable course of action.
If you have a food complaints:
- do keep receipts (not essential but helpful)
- do keep the food in the wrapper (if possible) and put it in an air-tight container
- do keep perishable food under temperature control (i.e. refrigerated or frozen) especially if your complaint involves decomposition or off smells and tastes
- do read the label for ‘Best Before’ and ‘Use By’ dates, and instructions for use – if the food has past the 'Use by' or 'Best Before' date, or not stored as the manufacturers instructions you can expect problems. Check your refrigerator temperature to ensure it is at or below 8oC. We recommend your refrigerator is kept at 5oC
- don't be tempted to handle or pull out any ‘foreign object’ found in the food, leave it in place
- don't throw away any of the food or packaging.
Please refer food complaints to the Environmental Health or Trading Standards Office.
Contact Reigate & Banstead Borough Council
If you are making a complaint about health and hygiene such as:
- food poisoning
- poor hygiene in preparation and storage
- mouldy food
- foreign objects in food such as glass, human or animal debris, metal.
Contact
- email food.safety@reigate-banstead.gov.uk (for food which has been bought in the borough. If outside the borough contact the local Environmental Health Department in which the food was purchased).
- tel 01737 276417
- write to:
Food team
Environmental Health
Reigate and Banstead Borough Council
Castlefield Road
Reigate
RH2 0SH.
Contact Surrey Trading Standards Service
If your complaint is concerned with quality and composition such as:
- poor quality food
- food contaminated by chemicals
- improperly labelled food
- food that does not meet composite standards
- foods sold after the best before or use by date
- stale food
- watered down food.
Contact Surrey Trading Standards Service
- tel 01372 371704
- write to:
Mid Surrey Area Office
Bay Tree Office
Bay Tree Avenue
Kingston Road
Leatherhead
KT22 7SY - Website: Surrey Trading Standards website.
The Officer investigating your complaint will need an explanation of the circumstances which led to your complaint.
He or she will tell you whether an offence may have been committed under the Food Safety Act.
The Officer will decide the most appropriate course of action as determined by the Food Safety Act and Codes of Practice, national and local guidelines.
In most cases it is likely that the investigation will result in informal action.
This usually takes the form of a brief explanation to you by the Officer detailing the result of the investigation and with your agreement disclosing your identity to the relevant food business, since the customer relations department of most major food businesses would wish to contact you to give you an assurance of the quality of their product.
Occasionally it may be appropriate to consider more formal action, this may be a formal caution or a prosecution in the Magistrates Court.
For the matter to proceed to a prosecution the investigation would have to be conducted as a criminal investigation and sufficient evidence would need to be assembled to prove the offence beyond a reasonable doubt.
Additionally the council would need to investigate any claim by the food business that they had done everything they could possibly do to prevent the offence occurring, as this is a legal defence under the Act.
Even if these matters were satisfied the council may still not pursue a prosecution unless it was satisfied that the costs were justified and it is in the public interest to prosecute.
We will not seek to obtain or otherwise negotiate any compensation or redress on behalf of the complainant.
Should you have any questions relating to any of these matters please do not hesitate to raise them with the investigating officer.
Last updated : 29/02/2012
