Frozen food law

youaim

Is there a law that makes it illegal to sell a frozen pizza if it's been in a freezer that lost it's power a couple of hours ago. I tried to buy one yesterday and was told it couldn't be sold to me because it was against the law. Is there a law that specifically would make it illegal for the shop owner to sell it to me?

I realize it would be a bad idea for him to do so as if I got ill there might be some comeback on him - but I'm talking about a bona finda law that says it would literally be illegal for him to sell me the pizza

Lynsey

Yes there is such a law, but I believe it only applies to pepperoni pizzas, and then it only applies to deep pan.

Sorry, no more wine tonight.

Lynsey

youaim

This one was pineapple though - surely it's exempt!

I've scoured the web and I can't find anything. I think I'll chalk this one down to "yet another law made up by someone on the spot because it sounds almost like it might be true and there's some kind of vague regulations that are roughly in the same direction"

sco0ter

I did find this

The law requires chilled, high-risk foods to be stored at a temperature of less than 8°C.
The correct storage of chilled, high-risk food will be critical to food safety and must therefore be identified in your hazard analysis and monitored regularly.
It is the food temperature which is critical and not that of the unit.
It is recommended that chilled, high-risk foods are kept at temperatures between 0°C-5°C.
It is recommended that frozen foods are stored at temperatures below -18°C.

So looks like the SA was right not to sell it to you as it could not be known if it had been above the legal requirements.


http://www.hart.gov.uk/index/business/health_safety/food_safety/guidance_notes_info/chilled_frozen_food.htm

Princess_Coupon

I'm intriged now, any reason why you wanted to buy a partially defrosted pizza? :huh:

youaim

sco0ter wrote: »

I did find this

The law requires chilled, high-risk foods to be stored at a temperature of less than 8°C.
The correct storage of chilled, high-risk food will be critical to food safety and must therefore be identified in your hazard analysis and monitored regularly.
It is the food temperature which is critical and not that of the unit.
It is recommended that chilled, high-risk foods are kept at temperatures between 0°C-5°C.
It is recommended that frozen foods are stored at temperatures below -18°C.

So looks like the SA was right not to sell it to you as it could not be known if it had been above the legal requirements.


http://www.hart.gov.uk/index/business/health_safety/food_safety/guidance_notes_info/chilled_frozen_food.htm

Which bit of this makes it illegal to sell me the pizza though?

It can't be the the bit about it being below 18 degrees because it's just a a recommendation. If it was a requirement of the law it would say "the law requires" like it does for the chilled foods. The pizza wasn't even something the EU calls "quick-chilled" food, which apparently has to be below 18 degrees by law, except for infrequent fluctuations of 3 degrees which are allowed.
It can't be the bit about chilled food because the pizza wasn't chilled, it was frozen. In any case, that freezer was below 5 degrees.

I'm sure he was right from a common sense point of view - i.e. to avoid me taking his company to court later on if I happened to get food poisoning, but it wasn't "against the law" for him to sell me the pizza., it was just a decision he'd made, or a policy of his company

Princess_Coupon wrote: »

I'm intriged now, any reason why you wanted to buy a partially defrosted pizza? :huh:

People just making stuff up and claiming it's the law really annoys me. It's a pet peeve and something I've noticed happens a lot with businesses. Also, that frozen pizza was a nice one. The others which were in the fridge (that had also broken down) rather than the freezer were rubbish. They were happy to sell me the pizzas from the fridge incidentally, even though the fridges were definitely above 5 degrees (two hours of open front fridge with no power plus hot room = higher than 5 degrees), so I guess they sold me the chilled pizza illegally and denied me the frozen pizza even though they could have sold it to me legally. The chilled pizza was awful BTW

speedy_gonzalez

Years ago we had a freezer breakdown at the newsagents where I worked. Trading Standards said we had to chuck everything out

jenando999

I think the law is that frozen food which has been defrosted cannot be sold unless it is intended to be thawed anyway and clearly marked that it cannot be refrozen. Here's a link to the Food Standards Agency pdf about frozen foods.

http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/sfbbrch2.pdf

penrhyn

It happened to me in Ikea, thy had a freezer breakdown and would't sell me my favorite Blabarskaka ( its nices than it sounds!)

youaim

jenando999 wrote: »

I think the law is that frozen food which has been defrosted cannot be sold unless it is intended to be thawed anyway and clearly marked that it cannot be refrozen. Here's a link to the Food Standards Agency pdf about frozen foods.

http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/sfbbrch2.pdf

Ohh - that's useful.

It's not really a law though, just what looks to be a guideline or safety guide.

Also it says "should" (except for the "must" when refering to quick-frozen food). If it says should in some places and must in other places it implies (to me) that some are recommendations and others are based on law. I'm after a law - like "Food Safety Act 1990 (c. 16):, Section 7 - Rendering food injurious to health" kind of thing.

Maybe that's not how it works though. Maybe the law just says something along the lines of "you can't sell food that's dangerous" (section 8 of the above act) and then some other body (e.g. Food Standards Agency) defines what's "dangerous" on an ongoing basis, according to the current theories and advice from experts.

asharon

Yes it is illegal. If food is not maintained within certain temperates then it is no sellable. Alos, when food is transported you only have a certain amount of time it is allowed to be outside of a freezer.

But then at the end of the day a shop is entitled to refuse a sale for no reason at all.