If a shop wanted to sell home produced food from local people, what processes does the home producer need to follow?
This question was raised at the Community Shop Network meeting in Plymouth.
A panel of experts replied to question in the following ways:
- Country Markets Ltd is the national membership organisation representing home producers of foods and goods for sale. They have a very good website outlining the up to date legislation and best practice in this area - a useful web page can be found at http://www.country-markets.co.uk/become-a-producer-c17.html
- Home producers need to undertake regular food hygeine training and be in receipt of a food hygeine certificate
- Home producers also need to contact their local Environmental Health Officer (via the local authority) to asses the suitability of the kitchen
This is a tricky one. We want to encourage local people to make products for our shop, but the hygiene and compliance issues are not insignificant. For now we generally encourage people to join the local Country Market as they then have all of this expertise available to them, and we can then source products from Country Markets.
It's not a perfect solution, and I'm sure we would like to work with local producers more directly - and probably will over time - but it does offer a simple solution.
The next problem of course is getting Country Markets produce into the shop at a price that gives us a worthwhile margin...
For home bakers, the problems are not hard to overcome. Ring the local district council and they will usually be very helpful as to what standards the kitchen to be used has to attain. Your council should arrange for a free copy of 'Safer Food Better Business for Caterers' (published by the Food Standards Agency) to be sent out, or this can be downloaded from the internet.
After applying to the local council there will be a period of a few weeks before trading can commence, and the council officer will inspect the kitchen and make sure that the caterer is fully aware of any hazards etc.
Baked goods are not generally burdensome as far as rules and regs are concerned. The bigger compliance issues come with food containing meat etc.
We use an area set aside in the shop for the preparation of sandwiches, salads, teas, coffees etc and were well supported by the authorities. The biggest problem with "home baking" is the reliability of supply and the need to label and describe the product. We do use local small suppliers but they need to have all the hygiene boxes ticked.