Chamber and committees

Food Standards Scotland regularly review the alert service including the open rates of emails and texts received. In October 2019 (6 months following the official launch) a survey will be sent to subscribers to collect feedback about the service which will include the accessibility of the text alert system.

As a matter of best practice, food business operators (FBOs) should consider using a system where staff direct allergen queries to a nominated person to ensure the consistency of allergen information to consumers. However, under the law there are overarching requirements that FBOs must provide safe food and ensure that their staff are trained on hygienic and safe food production. Technical guidance, tools and training material to support allergen training is available via the Food Standards Scotland website. In addition, external training and accreditation is available through organisations such as the Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland.

Food Standards Scotland (FSS) has developed guidance and tools to support food businesses, including caterers regarding food allergies, which is freely available on its website. These resources include:

• MenuCal, a free online tool that supports two areas of FSS work in the out of home catering settings: mandatory provision of allergen information and voluntary energy (calorie) labelling.
• Technical guidance developed with the Food Standards Agency (FSA) in order to support food businesses (including caterers) with the implementation of the applicable food law. It provides practical guidance on the interpretation and practical application of the specific requirements laid out in the Regulation on allergen information.

In addition, FSS jointly developed an interactive online training tool that covers catering and manufacturing premises and consists of six modules that are specific to allergen information.

FSS alongside the Food Standards Agency (FSA), developed practical guidance on the interpretation and practical application of the specific requirements laid out in the EU Regulation on allergen information.

MenuCal is a free online tool that supports two areas of FSS work in the out of home catering settings: mandatory provision of allergen information and voluntary energy labelling. It is available on the FSS website and is currently being promoted to food businesses via Environmental Health in Scottish LA’s.

The FSS website carries a link to an interactive online training tool that was developed with FSA when it was formerly FSA Scotland. The training material covers catering and manufacturing premises and consists of six modules that are specific to allergen information.

This information is not held centrally. Information on patients who have been admitted to hospital as an emergency due to food allergies and the number of deaths due to food allergies in the last five years is available in response to S5W-22860 on 8 May 2019.

All answers to written parliamentary questions are available on the Parliament’s website, the search facility for which can be found at http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx .

Most emergency treatment for food allergies is provided in a primary care or emergency department setting and information on this specific activity is not centrally held.

The number of patients who have been admitted to hospital as an emergency due to food allergies and the number of deaths due to food allergies in the last five years are shown in the following two tables.

Table 1. Patients admitted to hospital as an emergency due to a diagnosis of food allergy; NHS Scotland; 2014–18.

This is a matter for individual Health Boards. The information requested is not held centrally by the Scottish Government.

The health and wellbeing of children and young people within our schools is vitally important and a priority of this government.

All school pupils health and wellbeing is underpinned by Curriculum for Excellence (CfE), Scotland’s curriculum for all children and young people aged 3-18. It is designed around eight curriculum areas, including Health and Wellbeing, and aims to develop the attributes, knowledge and skills needed to flourish in life, learning and work. For each curriculum area CfE has experiences and outcomes which set out what each pupil is expected to learn and how they are expected to progress through four levels of learning. It is up to teachers to decide what to study against the experiences and outcomes each year.

The Food and Health section within Health and Wellbeing sets out the experiences and outcomes that pupils should have during the course of their day to day learning about food choices and the relationship to their health and wellbeing. This learning can be delivered through a variety of classes and activities to help to ensure that pupils develop a full understanding of food issues in their widest sense. For example, as well as learning how to cook, food education encompasses things like how to understand food labelling and recognise that some people may have dietary needs, such as allergies, that require them to avoid certain foods.

In addition, Education Scotland have developed benchmarks to provide clarity on the national standards expected within each curriculum area at each level. They set out clear lines of progression across all curriculum areas from Early to Fourth Levels. Their purpose is to make clear what learners need to know and be able to do to progress through the levels, and to support consistency in teachers' and other practitioners' professional judgements. The benchmarks are designed to be concise and accessible, with sufficient detail to communicate clearly the standards expected for each curriculum level.

We are committed to supporting local authority kerbside collection arrangements alongside our deposit return scheme. We have engaged extensively with stakeholders on the design of that scheme and will set out next steps with its implementation shortly.

The current consultation on reforms to the packaging producer responsibility scheme also sets out proposals for how these reforms could support local authority kerbside collections in future.

The duty to comply with the ban on biodegradable municipal waste landfill rests with those responsible for waste disposal. Our waste markets study, published on 23 April, assessed a range of processing and disposal capacity across the UK and elsewhere.

We are working with local authorities and other stakeholders who do not have a solution in place to identify ways, such as collaborative procurement and improved recycling, in which they can comply with the ban as soon as possible. We are also working to raise awareness of the forthcoming ban in the commercial sector and seeking improvements in recycling and waste minimisation performance.