Food standards and hygiene

The role of environmental health is to protect the public health of residents and visitors to South Lanarkshire.  Public health can be defined as “the science and art of preventing disease”, prolonging life and improving the quality of life through organised efforts and informed choices of society, organisations, communities and individuals.

Our role in food safety and public health

In line with this, the primary objective of the Food and Business Regulation Team is to ensure the safety, quality and authenticity of food produced and sold by food businesses based in South Lanarkshire.

As a Statutory Food Authority operating under the Food Safety Act 1990 and Assimilated Regulation (EU) 2017/625, we achieve this by:

• delivering a planned programme of food law inspections for food businesses
• responding to complaints
• investigating cases of foodborne illness
• sampling foods to ensure they are fit for human consumption and meet all quality, compositional, and authenticity requirements, and
• providing advice and guidance to food businesses. 

Further information about our work can be found in the following pages, along with detailed guidance on areas such as allergen management, cross-contamination, food labelling, and food hygiene training.

You will also find links to our sampling policy and the Food Hygiene Information Scheme, which provides ratings from recent inspections of food businesses including hotels, restaurants, cafés, bars, and takeaways.