Meat food business compliance (FBO audits) England, Wales and Northern Ireland

Key successes in the quarter

Overall FBO compliance with food safety, hygiene and animal welfare regulations (based on most recent audit score) is stable at the end of quarter 1 with 98.9% rated ‘Good’ or ‘Generally Satisfactory’. 

Concerns/risks

The 8% shortfall of audits completed in Q1 is related to higher volumes of both scheduled audits and partial (follow-up audits). The scheduling of audits is aligned to FBO compliance and the volumes vary per quarter across all regions. Audits are prioritised and all partial audits, as well as full audits of FBOs in the lower compliance categories, are completed to schedule.

An increase in post-Covid/EU-Exit inward missions (export audits) has had to take precedence and is currently requiring additional veterinary auditor resource and difficulties in recruiting into veterinary auditor vacancies has provided additional challenges in meeting audit completion targets.

Next steps

Business case to be finalised for additional export/import audit resource to address increased volume of activity and ongoing recruitment campaigns are underway to fill vacancies in both domestic and international trade audit teams. These activities aim to address the shortfall in audit completion rates.

• 82% (0% points higher than quarter 4) full audit completion, quarter 1 2022 to 2023 focused on overdue high risk audits
• 98.9% (0.2% points from Quarter 4) Meat FBO premises rated 'Good' or 'Generally satisfactory'. 

Volume of meat FBOs rated

• Good: 62.1% (increase of 25 ratings)
• Generally satisfactory: 36.8% (decrease of 19 ratings)
• Improvement necessary: 0.9% (increase of 2 ratings)
• Urgent improvement necessary: 10.2% (decrease of 2 ratings)

Full audit completion against target for England Wales