10 years of Food Standards Scotland

April 1, 2025, marked a decade since Food Standards Scotland (FSS) was established. Over the last 10 years, we've worked to protect consumers from food safety risks, support healthier eating, and maintain high food standards across the country

The food environment in Scotland has changed over the last ten years and we’ve worked hard to adapt and meet the challenges that have been presented.

Collaboration has always been at the heart of our work. We do not operate in isolation, we work closely with the Scottish Government (SG), local authorities (LAs), the Food Standards Agency (FSA), UK government, other devolved administrations, and industry partners to maintain high food safety and public health standards.

You can read about some of our work from the last decade below. We look forward to the next ten years of working to keep food in Scotland safe and support the people of Scotland to have healthier diets.

Milestones from our first decade

2016

  • Launched the Scottish food crime hotline in partnership with Crimestoppers. It allows people to report food crime for free and anonymously by calling 0800 028 7926 or by completing an online form.
  • Introduced the Eatwell Guide, developed with UK and devolved administrations, the guide includes advice about calorie information, front of pack labelling and messaging on key dietary recommendations.
  • Rolled out the engaging ‘Kitchen Crimes’ campaign to encourage safer food practices.

2019

  • FSS switched to employing Official Veterinarians in-house rather than meat Official Controls being delivered through a third-party. This fundamentally changed the way we work and improved retention and recruitment of vets working as OVs. Along with our Meat Hygiene Inspectors, OVs play a critical role in supporting Scotland’s meat industry and safeguarding public health and animal health and welfare.

2021

  • Prepacked for direct sale labelling became law in 2021. This requires businesses to include a full ingredient list, highlighting allergens, to improve information on food packed in advance before being offered to consumers.

2022

  • Published the first 'Our Food' report, which looks at food standards across the UK
  • To  prepare for EU Exit, we worked hard to implement the legislative and process changes needed to protect Scotland’s internationally recognised food and feed safety standards and high levels of consumer protection after we left the EU. We worked closely with the Food Standards Agency (FSA) to strengthen and enhance our joint risk analysis processes and capacity, and with the UK and devolved governments to develop three new frameworks to manage powers returning from the EU in areas of devolved competence.
  • As part of our commitment to supporting businesses and keeping consumers safe, we launched our Safe Smoked Fish and Fresh Produce training tools.

2024

  • We drove the introduction of legislation requiring bread and flour be fortified with folic acid to help prevent birth defects.

2025

  •  A pioneering regulatory sandbox was launched in March 2025 by FSS and the FSA, to make sure that cell cultivated products (CCPs) are safe for human consumption.

 

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