Monday, 13 October 2025
The FSAI today publishes its Audit of Ambient Storage & Distribution Food Business Operations. The FSAI has overall responsibility for the enforcement of food law in Ireland. It carries out targeted audits of food businesses to determine the level of compliance with current food law and the effectiveness of its implementation.
This targeted audit of food businesses was undertaken as part of the FSAI’s 2023 planned programme of audits. Twenty-four on-site audits of individual food business establishments were conducted between April 2023 and Aug 2023. The audit focused on several key areas such as labelling, traceability, storage conditions, product handling activities etc. and set out to verify that food safety management systems are fit for purpose within the food businesses audited.
The objective of the audit was to
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Assess food business operator compliance with food legislation applicable to its business with particular emphasis on labelling, traceability, and storage conditions.
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Verify that any products no longer fit for human consumption are being managed appropriately and in compliance with relevant food law.
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Verify that any additional product handling activities carried out are done so in compliance with relevant food law.
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Verify that food safety management systems in place including prerequisite programmes are fit for purpose for the premises audited.
The audit identified a total of 77 non-compliances with food law and highlights the need for food business operators to improve compliance with certain requirements of food law relevant to their business. Non-compliances with food law were detected within 16 (66%) of the 24 food businesses audited. Pest control featured as the most prominent area of non-compliance throughout the audit programme. Non-compliances associated with pest control were identified within 14 (58%) out of the 24 food businesses audited. Almost 30% of all non-compliances raised were linked to the area of pest control, with rodent droppings being identified within one-third of food businesses inspected during this audit project
The report makes a series of recommendations to strengthen compliance with food law. In all cases, any non-compliance identified was referred to the relevant supervising agency for follow-up and the food businesses audited have undertaken corrective actions as required by the supervising agencies.
The audit report is available here.
