Consultation pack: The draft Feed and Food (Miscellaneous Amendment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2025.

This consultation will be of most interest to 

Food and feed businesses, local authorities, and other stakeholders with an interest in food and feed law. 

Purpose of the consultation 

The proposed legislation will make changes to six existing Statutory Rules to ensure that food and feed safety and standards requirements continue to be fully enforceable in Northern Ireland, and to correct some minor errors identified. 

This consultation is seeking views of businesses, consumers, other stakeholders, local authorities and the wider public on the impact of the proposed amendments. 

How to respond 

Please send your responses to this consultation to:  

Email: ni.legislation@food.gov.uk 

Postal address: 

Legislation Team, FSA in Northern Ireland 

10a - 10c Clarendon Road, Belfast, BT1 3BG. 

Details of consultation 

Introduction 

This consultation seeks views on the impact of draft amendments to six pieces of legislation. The amendments are necessary to ensure that the affected legislation is clear and up to date and, to ensure existing food and feed safety and standards requirements are enforceable in Northern Ireland. We are also proposing to revoke three Statutory Rules (SRs) which are no longer required. 

Main proposals: 

The proposed legislation would amend the following SRs: 

a. The Addition of Vitamins, Minerals and Other Substances Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2007 (S.R. 2007 No. 301); 

b. The Food Safety (Information and Compositional Requirements) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016 (S.R. 2016 No. 251); 

c. The Food Hygiene Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2006 (S.R. 2006 No. 3); 

d. The Specified Sugar Products Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2003 (S.R. 2003 No. 301); 

e. The Animal Feed (Composition, Marketing and Use) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016 (S.R. 2016 No. 4); 

f. The Caseins and Caseinates Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016 (S.R. 2016 No. 415). 

The proposed legislation would revoke the following SRs: 

g. The Foods Intended for Use in Energy Restricted Diets for Weight Reduction Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1997 (S.R. 1997 No. 2182); 

h. The Food for Particular Nutritional Uses (Addition of Substances for Specific Nutritional Purposes) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2009 (S.R. 2009 No. 398); 

i. The Salad Cream Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1966 (S.R. 1966 No. 192). 

Detailed Proposals 

The Addition of Vitamins, Minerals and Other Substances Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2007 

The purpose of the proposed amendments is to provide for additional offences and penalties as a clear consequential deterrent for non-compliance with requirements relating to use of vitamins, minerals and other substances which are prohibited or restricted due to safety concerns. 

The Addition of Vitamins, Minerals and Other Substances Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2007 (the 2007 Regulations) provide for the enforcement in Northern Ireland of Regulation (EC) No 1925/2006 on the addition of vitamins and minerals and of certain other substances to foods. 

The proposed amendments would extend the existing enforcement provisions outlined in the 2007 Regulations so that failure to comply with Article 8(2) in relation to substances listed in parts A and B of Annex III of Regulation (EC) No. 1925/2006 constitutes an offence. The extension of these enforcement provisions would ensure that district councils have the ability to enforce the requirements through Northern Ireland domestic legislation. This is in line with the existing enforcement provisions in the domestic legislation. Parallel consequential deterrents are present in enforcement legislation in England, Scotland, and Wales. 

Article 8 and Annex III of Regulation (EC) No 1925/2006 lay down requirements relating to substances whose use in foods is prohibited, restricted or under Community scrutiny. 

This includes substances: 

• Prohibited under Part A of Annex III; 
• Restricted with certain conditions of use under Part B of Annex III; 
• Kept under Community scrutiny subject to evidence of safety under Part C of Annex III. 

The Food Safety (Information and Compositional Requirements) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016 

The Food Safety (Information and Compositional Requirements) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016 (the 2016 Regulations) would be amended to provide for the enforcement of Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2017/1798 relating to the specific compositional and information requirements for total diet replacement for weight control (TDR) products. 

Regulation (EU) No 2017/1798 sets out specific compositional and information requirements for TDR products. TDR products are specially formulated for overweight or obese adults who intend to achieve weight reduction and when used as instructed replace the whole daily diet. The energy per day provided by TDR products must not be less than 600 kcal and must not exceed 1200 kcal, and the additional compositional requirements ensure that TDR products satisfy the daily nutritional requirements of overweight or obese people. Our understanding is that there is a very small market for TDR products in Northern Ireland. 

The proposed amendments to the 2016 Regulations, will allow for the enforcement of the EU rules relating to food for specific groups, and of future amendments to these requirements, including for TDR products. The amendments would enable an authorised officer of a District Council to serve an Improvement Notice if there are reasonable grounds for believing that a Food Business Operator is failing to comply with requirements. 

Additional technical amendments would provide clarity on the enforcement of specified EU provisions relating to infant and follow-on formula, Foods for Special Medical Purposes, TDR products and processed cereal-based foods. EU legislation sets compositional and information requirements for these food categories, and the 2016 Regulations provides for the enforcement of these requirements. 

A minor typographical error would also be fixed. 

The Food Hygiene Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2006 

The Food Hygiene Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2006 would be amended to revoke provisions which are no longer necessary, in relation to requirements placed on Northern Ireland food businesses regarding the form and application of health and identification marks for products of animal origin. 

The provisions are no longer required in domestic legislation as the relevant requirements on the form and application of health and identification marks are now set out in relevant EU legislation. 

Correction of Typographical Errors 

The Specified Sugar Products Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2003 would be amended to correct a typographical error in Schedule 1. In the reserved description for “Semi-white sugar”, invert sugar content of not more than 0.01% by weight should read 0.1%. 

The Animal Feed (Composition, Marketing and Use) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016 would be amended to correct a typographical error in regulation 19. 

These Regulations would also amend The Caseins and Caseinates Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2016 to correct a typographical error in Schedule 3, replacing “Maximum ash content” with “Minimum ash content”. 

Revocation 

This legislation would revoke The Foods Intended for Use in Energy Restricted Diets for Weight Reduction Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1997 and The Food for Particular Nutritional Uses (Addition of Substances for Specific Nutritional Purposes) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2009. These regulations are no longer required as they implement and enforce EU provisions that are no longer in force. 

This legislation would also revoke The Salad Cream Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1966, which are no longer considered necessary. This would bring the legislative position in Northern Ireland in line with the rest of the UK, where equivalent legislation was revoked in 1991. Food information provisions ensure consumers can continue to make informed choices. 

Impacts 

We have not identified any significant impact from the proposed amendments on the private, voluntary, or public sector. There will be a minor cost to businesses and district council environmental health departments to allow for familiarisation with the legislative changes.  Should you have any information which you believe indicates further impacts, please include this in your response, so we can consider this further. 

Engagement and Consultation Process 

Your views are particularly sought on the questions listed below. 

Following the end of the consultation process, all responses will be collated and considered in the preparation of the final legislation. 

Questions asked in this consultation: 

1. Do you have any comments on the proposed approach as set out in this consultation? 

2. Have you identified any concerns or risks regarding the proposed approach that appear not to have been adequately addressed? 

3. Are you aware of any impacts of the proposed measures that have not been identified in this consultation? If so, please share any information which might indicate a significant impact the proposed amendments might have on the private, voluntary, or public sectors. 

Other relevant documents 

The draft Feed and Food (Miscellaneous Amendment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2025 are attached (Annex B). 

Responses 

Responses are required by close Tuesday 4th November 2025.  Please state, in your response, whether you are responding as a private individual or on behalf of an organisation/company (including details of any stakeholders your organisation represents). 

On behalf of the Food Standards Agency, thank you for participating in this public consultation. 

Legislation Team 

Food Standards Agency in Northern Ireland

Annex A: Standard Consultation Information 

Disclosure of the information you provide. 

Information provided in response to this consultation may be subject to publication or release to other parties or to disclosure in accordance with the access to information regimes (these are primarily the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA), the Data Protection Act 2018 (DPA) and the Environmental Information Regulations 2004). 

If you want information you provide to be treated as confidential, please be aware that, under the FOIA, there is a statutory Code of Practice with which public authorities must comply and which deals, amongst other things, with obligations of confidence. 

In view of this it would be helpful if you could explain to us why you regard the information you have provided as confidential. If we receive a request for disclosure of the information we will take full account of your explanation, but we cannot give an assurance that confidentiality can be maintained in all circumstances. 

Any automatic confidentiality disclaimer generated by your IT system will not, of itself, be regarded as binding. 

The Food Standards Agency will be what is known as the ‘Controller’ of the personal data provided to us. 

Why we are collecting your personal data. 

Your personal data is being collected as an essential part of the consultation process, so that we can contact you regarding your response and for statistical purposes. We may also use it to contact you about related matters. 

The Data Protection Act 2018 states that, as a government department, the Food Standards Agency may process personal data as necessary for the effective performance of a task carried out in the public interest. i.e. a consultation. 

What we do with it 

All the personal data we process is located on servers within the European Union. Our cloud-based services have been procured through the government framework agreements, and these services have been assessed against the national cyber security centre cloud security principles. 

No third parties have access to your personal data unless the law allows them to do so. The Food Standards Agency will sometimes share data with other government departments, public bodies, and organisations which perform public functions to assist them in the performance of their statutory duties or when it is in the public interest.  

What are your rights? 

You have a right to see the information we hold on you by making a request in writing to the email address below. If at any point you believe the information we process on you is incorrect you can request to have it corrected. If you wish to raise a complaint on how we have handled your personal data, you can contact our Data Protection Officer who will investigate the matter. 

If you are not satisfied with our response or believe we are processing your personal data not in accordance with the law you can complain to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) at https://ico.org.uk, or telephone 0303 123 1113. 

Our Data Protection Officer in the FSA is the Information Management and Security Team Leader who can be contacted at the following email address: informationmanagement@food.gov.uk 

Further information 

If you require a more accessible format of this document, please send details to the named contact for responses to this consultation and your request will be considered. 

This consultation has been prepared in accordance with HM Government consultation principles.