Research into the use and perceptions of guidance on food safety and standards

As the public sector body responsible for ensuring food safety in Scotland, Food Standards Scotland’s (FSS) role includes the provision of independent advice on all areas of food safety, standards, labelling and nutrition. 

FSS focuses on clear, consistent, evidence-based, consumer-centred guidance. Guidance and tools consist of information provided in a range of formats to inform and guide food businesses to comply with food law, for instance, in practical documents such as CookSafe and online tools such as the Safe Smoked Fish Tool and allergen training. However, an evaluation of the Food Law Rating System (FLRS) (October 2024), commissioned by FSS, identified areas for improvement and recommended research into the effectiveness of FSS guidance.

In 2025, FSS commissioned The Lines Between (TLB) to conduct research into the awareness and access, relevance, and effectiveness of FSS guidance. The overarching research objectives were to:

• Awareness and access: Identify and review awareness of current guidance, where food businesses source guidance from and how it is promoted by local authorities, and users’ preferences.
• Relevance: Deliver a comprehensive qualitative evaluation of the use of guidance by food business operators and food law professionals
• Effectiveness: Provide evidence-based insight on improving the utility, efficacy, efficiency and relevance of tools and guidance to increase their use and enhance compliance

Key research requirements were to evidence how guidance is used by food businesses and food law professionals[2], gaps in guidance and suggestions for further guidance, and food businesses and food law professionals' preferences for accessing guidance and any barriers to uptake.

This report presents independent, evidence-based findings which will be used to inform the development of the SAFER programme and the continued development of other guidance to promote compliance with food law. 

The research began with a familiarisation and design phase. Researchers reviewed a range of relevant documentation, including existing guidance. This review helped to inform the sampling approach and the research tools. 

Primary data collection consisted of a mixed-methods approach, using qualitative and quantitative research. In-depth, qualitative interviews were conducted with three groups of participants, outlined below, to understand the experiences and opinions of each group in detail. The focus of the research was to understand the experiences of food businesses. However, TLB used FSS’ existing relationships with local authorities and other stakeholders to undertake a small number of qualitative interviews among these groups and to offer a quantitative online survey to all food law professionals across Scotland to ensure their views were also included.

Interviews were conducted with food businesses to understand how they currently use guidance, and how guidance can be improved to increase its use.

Drawing on profile information available to FSS, TLB created a robust sampling strategy to ensure an adequate range of businesses were included in the research. 

Food businesses were then recruited in line with that strategy by an external recruitment agency, Taylor McKenzie Research. Quotas were set on business type, size (number of employees) and location. All respondents were responsible for making decisions for the business regarding food safety and standards.

Interviews with 50 food businesses across Scotland took place between August and November 2025. The interviews lasted approximately 30 minutes and were conducted via MS Teams. Features of diversity across the sample of food businesses that participated in interviews included:

• Type: Catering (36), Retail (9), Manufacturing (5).
• Size: 1-49 employees (44), 50-249 employees (5), 250+ employees (1).
• Location: Urban (34), Suburban (6), Rural (10)
• Local Authority: Businesses from 20 local authorities were interviewed, including Glasgow (10), Edinburgh (10), and 30 from 18 other authorities[3].

There were two strands to the research with food law professionals. These aimed to understand how they currently use and promote FSS, and what their preferences are in terms of formats, features and channels for retrieving the information they require.

• 30 food law professionals completed an online survey containing a mix of open and closed questions between 12 September and 19 November 2025.
  • Surveys were completed by 14 Environmental Health Officers, 8 Lead Food Officers, 6 Food Officers and 2 Authorised Officers, representing 17 local authorities across Scotland.
    • The survey was promoted by FSS in its Monthly Enforcement Report in September, October and November to food law professionals.
• Seven semi-structured interviews were conducted with food law professionals who responded to the survey and agreed to be interviewed. They represented six local authorities. Interviews took place between 20 and 31 October 2025, lasted approximately 30 minutes and were conducted via MS Teams.
• Key findings from the survey questions are detailed in the report, with full results of all closed questions provided in Annexe 1, which is provided separately.

While food businesses and food law professionals were identified as key audiences for the research, there was also a desire to understand if and how guidance is used more widely, and how it could be improved. Possible users in scope for the research included experts on food safety and standards beyond the public sector or local authority food law delivery, membership and representative bodies for food producers and suppliers, and third sector organisations, for example.

FSS contacted stakeholders to ask if they would participate in the research. Five semi-structured interviews were conducted between 5 and 28 November 2025 with stakeholders from five different organisations, mostly representing trade and membership bodies. Interviews were conducted using MS Teams and lasted between 30 and 45 minutes. 

With agreement from interviewees, all interviews were recorded and transcribed to ensure all perspectives were accurately captured and included in the analysis. 

A thematic analysis was conducted of all qualitative interviews. A coding framework structured around the research questions was developed following a workshop where the research team read a sample of interviews and identified the key themes. This also created additional descriptive codes or subcodes to capture the breadth of discussion in each extract of qualitative data. The framework also included respondent details such as business type, size and location to allow analysis by a range of categories. The research team then read all data in the transcript, breaking down each element into discrete parts and categorising and labelling it against the coding framework. 

Survey data was analysed using Excel. Frequency counts were calculated for each closed questions, and a thematic analysis also conducted by the research team to gain insight from open survey questions. Given the small sample size (30), the analysis did not include sub-group analysis or significant testing.

Drawing on detailed transcripts and survey data, each chapter of this report aims to answer the following questions by exploring respondents’ views on awareness and access, relevance and effectiveness of guidance from FSS and other sources:

• Chapter 2: Are food businesses aware of Food Standards Scotland and its guidance?
• Chapter 3: Where do food businesses and food law professionals get guidance on food safety and standards?
• Chapter 4: How relevant is FSS guidance?
• Chapter 5: How could FSS guidance be more effective?

Direct quotes are included to illustrate some of the points made; these may have been lightly edited for brevity or to maintain confidentiality and prevent disclosure. Survey data has been included in boxes where relevant. 

Appendix 1 in this report has more information on the wider factors impacting food law compliance in food businesses. The full results of the online survey, as well as copies of the research tools and survey questions, are available in Annexe 1, which is provided separately.