The identification and the effective enforcement and control of the risks of foodborne illness in the micro owner/managed catering business sector

The incidence of foodborne disease in England and Wales shows a continuous risethroughout the latter part of the twentieth and early twenty first centuries despite regularinspections by Environmental Health Officers (EHOs). In order to ameliorate this, theconcept of a risk based system of food safety management, HACCP, was introduced.This thesis describes the research to determine the effectiveness of EHOs in identifyingand controlling the significant risks of foodborne disease in micro owner/managedcatering businesses (MO/MCBs) over a 14 year period which marked the transition fromprescriptive to risk based legislation. By deconstructing and itemising inspection reportson 80 premises the EHOs' findings are collated and any trends revealed, therebyquantitatively demonstrating the propensity of EHOs to identify these risks.The MO/MCB perception of authority, in particular EHOs, is explored by a series of indepthdiscussions with a focus group of 12 participants, taken from the original 80businesses, thus exposing any cultural issues which relate to the effectiveness ofidentifying and controlling risk.The results show that significant risks are rarely identified by EHOs in food safety reportsprior to the introduction of the risk based legislation and that there is little changeafterwards, it further shows that a major factor is the unwillingness of the MO/MCBs toconfide in EHOs regarding food safety problems.The findings of this research highlight a weakness in the concept of HACCP in this sectorin that MO/MCBs do not have the scientific expertise, and EHOs do not have sufficientknowledge of the systems within the business, to comprehensively identify the significantrisks in the businesses.This demonstrates the need for a cooperative rather than a confrontational approach toenforcement in order to effectively identify and control the significant risks of foodborneillness within the MO/MCB sector.xvi