Alcohol & Food Safety

Please ensure you provide the following information for any food operations on site at the event.

This should all be provided via the KRM portal:

The Health and Safety Declaration (complete the yes/no section on your landing page in the KRM portal)
Upload evidence of your Food Hygiene Rating (you need a minimum of a 4* rating to exhibit at this event)
Upload evidence of your registration as a food business with your local authority (e.g. your registration letter/inspection letter)
Upload your HACCP covering your F&B operations at the show
Upload up to date Food Hygiene Training Certificate/s (Managers need Level 3, general food handlers/Staff minimum Level 2)
Upload a Health & safety risk assessment for all relevant activity (including build and breakdown periods)
If alcohol forms any part of your offering, please upload a completed Intent To Supply Alcohol form (available from the Forms page of this manual) along with a copy of the exhibitor’s Personal Licence.
Gas Request Form – mandatory to complete and upload if you are intending to use LPG onsite (available from the Forms page of this manual)

*If you have any trouble logging into KRM then email sam@krmsafety.management to confirm your login details or obtain a Passkey.

Your stand and all food related activities will be audited by an Environmental Health Officer onsite. All and any remedial actions/recommendations they make must be adhered to in order to continue trading.

Please refer to the very helpful Reminder Sheet for Food Traders which you can find here.

Alcohol

Alcohol sampling and sale for off-site consumption is permitted. In order to do this, you must have a personal licence holder on the stand. When they are not present, they must nominate another member of staff to be responsible for the stand in their absence.

Any proposed alcoholic sampling activity must be declared in the HEALTH AND SAFETY DECLARATION. The Health & Safety Declaration must be completed and returned by 14th November.

The acceptable sampling sizes are:

Beer/Cider/Lager/Alco Pops – 50ml
Wine/Champagne – 25ml
Spirits – 5ml

Sale of alcohol by the glass is not permitted without previous agreement from Amelia Rimell.

The serving of these samples should be made in such a way as to manage the risk of transmission. Each sample should be individual and only 1 use sample cups etc should be used. These should not be re-used and disposed of immediately.

Allergens

In accordance with all food service, businesses must be able to supply details of their products that contain any of the 14 recognised allergens:

Celery

Gluten

Soya Sesame

Mustard

Lupin (flour)

Milk

Eggs

Peanuts

Tree

Nuts

Fish

Crustaceans (prawns, etc.)

Molluscs (oysters, squid, etc.)

Sulphit

If food packaging is not yet compliant, details of any products containing any of these 14 allergens must be listed clearly in an obvious place, such as on a menu, chalkboard or information sheet with a breakdown of allergens they contain.

Important aspects of the legislation are:

Exhibitors must be able to demonstrate a thorough understanding of their legal responsibilities under food allergen legislation and must be able to confirm whether or not a food product contains an allergen.
Information must be precise. For example, it is not acceptable to state that food ‘could’ or ‘may’ contain allergens. The use of generic description, such as ‘dairy’ is also too vague; recognised descriptions, such as ‘milk’ or ‘eggs’ must be used.
Written allergen information, such as on product labels or as described above, must be available.
Environmental health officers will police and enforce the regulations; non-compliance will result in large fines.

Food sale

Exhibitors are permitted to sell food for on or off-site consumption. Exhibitors wishing to sell food for immediate consumption will be subject to a food hygiene audit and must conform to all regulations.

Food sampling

Food sampling is permitted and exhibitors will be subject to a food hygiene audit and must conform to all regulations. Any proposed food sampling activity must be declared in the HEALTH AND SAFETY DECLARATION and outlined within the respective risk assessment. The acceptable sampling sizes are:

Unwrapped Food – “bite size” portions.
Individually wrapped items.
Alcoholic beverages (as above).

Food sampling must be done so that customers do not touch food that other people will eat. The guidance below should be followed:

Place food to be sampled where you can see it so that customers can be supervised.
Do not allow customers to sample from food held as stock for sale.
Samples should be offered as individual portions that cannot be shared.
If food items like biscuits are being used to take sample food from dishes/bowls, only use items that will not break off into the sample (to stop customers putting fingers into the food to get the biscuit out).
Avoid large bowls or piles of food for sampling as this offers more chances for people to put fingers into the food.
If possible control sampling of e.g.: sauces, by spooning food into small individual pots or onto biscuits/bread etc.
Avoid use of items like plastic spoons if customers might put them into their mouth and back into the food. Supervise to ensure this does not happen. Only single use cutlery should be used.
Do not top up bowls, dishes or plates unless these have been fully washed and cleaned after being sampled from already.
Ensure that customers understand where any discarded items such as stones from food, or sampling sticks, should be placed.
Use different containers for food and waste to help avoid confusion by customers.

Food hygiene

The below guide is supplemental to current UK legal requirements in: The Event Safety Guide, Food Hygiene (England) Regulations 2006, and Food Safety Act 1990.

It is in your interests to read this guidance carefully to ensure that you and your staff fully meet the standards as laid down by UK law. This guide should be read in conjunction with the regulations and should not be regarded as a substitute for them. Failure to comply with or maintain these standards will be the sole responsibility of the Exhibitor and any recourse will be to the Exhibitor.

Each stand shall ensure that the preparation, processing, manufacturing, packaging, storing, transportation, distribution, handling and offering for sale or supply of food are carried out in a safe and hygienic manner. Food Safety legislation in the UK changed in January 2006. The Food Hygiene (England) Regulations 2006 applies to all food businesses. These came into force on 11 January 2006. Visit www.food.gov.uk for further details.

On 29 April 2004 the European Parliament and Council issued Regulation (EC) No: 852/2004 on the hygiene of foodstuffs. Article 5 states that Food business operators shall put into place, implement and maintain a permanent procedure based on the principles of hazard analysis critical control points (HACCP). The HACCP principles referred to above consist of the following:

Identifying any hazards that must be prevented, eliminated, or reduced to acceptable levels.
Identifying the critical control points at the step or steps at which control is essential to prevent or eliminate a hazard or to reduce it to acceptable levels.
Establishing critical limits at critical control points that separate acceptability from unacceptability for the prevention, elimination or reduction of identified hazards.
Establishing and implementing effective monitoring procedures at critical control points.
Establishing corrective actions when monitoring indicates that a critical control point is not under control.
Establishing procedures, which shall be carried out regularly, to verify that measures outlined in the above paragraphs.
Establishing documents and records commensurate with the nature and size of the food business to demonstrate the effective application of the measures outlined in the above paragraphs.

When modification is made in the product, process, or any step, food business operations shall review the procedure and make necessary changes to it. No food stand may be used if it is unsanitary or in such a condition as to expose food to a risk of contamination.

The stand must be in good order and repair to enable it to be cleaned easily and properly. Additionally, surfaces in contact with food must be easy to clean and where necessary, to disinfect. It is recommended a suitable non-slip washable floor covering be provided on the service side of the counter and in the kitchen and/or preparation area. Any foods likely to support the growth of pathogenic micro-organisms or toxins should be maintained at a temperature of 8°C or below. The requirement also applies to such foods during purchase, delivery and storage prior to its arrival on the stand. Temperature records must be produced in relation to the above.

Any article or equipment that is likely to come into contact with food must be kept clean and constructed of materials that are not absorbent and can be easily and properly cleaned. All food containers must be kept clean. Open foods must not be placed less than 45cm (18 inches) from the ground.

All food on a stand must be protected from risk of contamination likely to render the food unfit for human consumption, injurious to health or contaminated in such a way that it would be unreasonable to expect it to be eaten in that state.

Any food which is unfit for human consumption, unsound or unwholesome must be kept apart from any other food and labelled “unfit food”. All food handlers working with open food must:

keep their clothing clean.
cover all cuts with a blue waterproof plaster/dressing (not white or skin coloured).
not spit, smoke, eat or drink whilst handling open food or in a room containing open food.
keep their hands clean.
wear clean and washable over-clothing.

Personal clothing should not be kept within an area where open food is handled unless it is stored in appropriate accommodation, i.e.: lockers/cupboards or sealed units.

No person, known or suspected to be suffering from, or to be a carrier of, a disease likely to be transmitted through food or while afflicted, for example with infected wounds, skin infection, sores or with diarrhoea, shall be permitted to work in any food handling area in any capacity in which there is any likelihood directly or indirectly of contaminating food with pathogenic micro-organisms.

Refuse and food waste must be disposed of in suitable closed containers.

Each stand where open food is handled, prepared or dispensed must be provided with a supply of blue waterproof plasters and bandages for first aid. Where persons are employed to operate the activity, the higher standard of first aid box complying with Health & Safety (First Aid) Regulations 1981 must be provided or other suitable arrangements made.

All staff should be properly supervised and instructed to ensure that they work hygienically. A greater degree of supervision may be needed for new staff awaiting formal training, staff handling high-risk foods and for less experienced staff.

Refrigeration temperatures must be recorded twice daily on a Temperature Monitoring Form. Risk Assessments should be undertaken on all catering operations.

Alleged Food Poisoning Procedure: where any customer or member of staff alleges illness has been caused by consumption of any food on the premises the Alleged Suspected Food Poisoning Form should be completed and forwarded to the official catering quality assessment department.

Every stand must have facilities for cleaning general surfaces which food might come into contact with. This should normally be an anti-bacterial/sanitising surface cleaner and disposable or clean reusable cloths for wiping the surface down. Antibacterial and disposable cloths can also be used to clean lightly soiled equipment such as knives used to cut or portion food samples.

A refrigerator is required for the storage of high-risk foods. Recommended storage temperature is between 1-5 degrees centigrade.

All open foods on display should be protected from a risk of contamination, i.e. a screen in front of the stand and over the food (sneeze guards).