Food Safety in UK Law

A carcase at the slaughterhouse, which the OV has refused to mark and which must be disposed of as animal by-product, cannot be treated as having been 'placed on the market' and is outside of the scope of a provision which is designed to deal with the inspection and seizure of suspected food.

This approach to the matter searches for the assumed common intention of the supplier and the consumer as to whether it is a term of the bargain that the product be supplied in order to be eaten hot. By this entirely objective enquiry, the court derives the terms of the bargain from what each party to the contract says and does (including the presentation of the supply in the shop and in any advertising).

However, I accept Miss Whipple's submission that the case was concerned with a "black letter line" setting the boundaries of an exemption to be found in the Directive itself. We are concerned with a differentiation in treatment between traders supplying similar goods within the same national exemption category. The Appellant submits that if an exemption is in principle permitted in national law by the VAT Directive it must be applied consistently with the principle of fiscal neutrality.

Given the constitutional position as this court now holds it to be, a minister who reserves a decision to himself—and equally a civil servant who is authorised by him to take a decision—must know or be told enough to ensure that nothing that it is necessary, because legally relevant, for him to know is left out of account. This is not the same as a requirement that he must know everything that is relevant.

The second part of Note (3) (b) relates to the nature of the supply- that it is of hot food. Supplies of hot food are always treated as standard rated supplies of food "in the course of catering." Again this is not surprising: it is directed at the standard case of a supply of hot prepared take-away or carry-out food to be consumed by the customer not at the caterer's premises, but at home or elsewhere.

Although this part of the Tribunal's decision did not expressly mention "in the course of catering," it is clear from earlier passages in the decision (see, in particular, paragraphs 88 and 89) that the Tribunal had the legislative language well in mind and had reached the view that it is not sufficient, if a supply is to be regarded as one made in the course of catering, merely to supply food. The customer must receive "something else" together with the food.

On 30 March 2012, representatives of the FSA and the Commission met in Brussels. According to the FSA's note of the meeting, the FSA set out its view that there was no evidence that desinewed meat posed a risk to consumers. Dr. Van Goethem said that the Commission wished to see an immediate ban on the use of ruminant bones and the reclassification of desinewed meat as MSM or they would introduce safeguard measures, which would have very severe consequences for the UK meat industry.