Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many (a) incidents have been reported to trading standards teams of and (b) prosecutions have taken place for food with falsely-labelled ingredients in the most recent period for which figures are available.

Monitoring food businesses to ensure compliance with legislation on food labelling and composition is the responsibility of county councils, unitary authorities, the London Boroughs and some but not all metropolitan borough councils. These local authorities are also responsible for taking enforcement action, including prosecutions, where non-compliance is found.

Data is reported to the Food Standards Agency (FSA) on the number of food analyses undertaken in relation to compositional issues and labelling and presentation issues; 23,599 analyses were undertaken in 2014/15, 16,899 for compositional issues and 6,700 for labelling and presentation issues.

Data is also reported to the FSA on the total number of prosecutions concluded for food standards issues. This includes action in relation to composition, labelling and presentation but also for other issues such as chemical contamination. In 2014/15, 75 United Kingdom food establishments were subject to prosecution.

The FSA has recently established a central register of successful food law prosecutions. Data collected for the first year of operation of the register is not yet complete, but in future it will provide more definitive data on prosecutions for offences of this nature.