About the Food Standards Office

The Food Standards Office of the Velocity Interoperability Network is responsible for the safety of food prepared, stored, distributed and sold within the Velocity Interoperability Network. It sets the hygiene and labelling standards that food businesses must meet, inspects those businesses, maintains the register of food businesses, and issues alerts and coordinates recalls when food is found to be unsafe.

The Office was established on 6 September 2026. Before that date each member organisation of the Network applied its own food hygiene arrangements to the canteens, cafés, retailers and suppliers at its sites, and there was no common standard, no shared register and no single point to which an unsafe food could be reported. The Office replaces those arrangements with one set of rules for the whole Network, one register and one inspection programme.

Organisation. The Office is led by a Director of Food Standards and has a staff of 58. Its 26 authorised inspectors are assigned to the six principal sites of the Network, from which they also inspect businesses at other locations. A standards team drafts the rules and advises businesses on compliance, an alerts team handles reports and recalls, and a small registry team maintains the register and prepares the Office's statistics. The Office is a service of the Network rather than a department: it exercises the powers of inspection and prohibition conferred on it at establishment and reports on its use of them each quarter.

The position at establishment. The figures below record the Office on the day it was established, drawn from the interim arrangements of the transition period from 10 August to 5 September 2026.

1,284
Food businesses on the register at establishment: 26
Authorised inspectors, assigned across the six principal sites: 218
Inspections carried out during the transition period: 5
Food alerts issued between 10 August and 5 September 2026

Responsibilities. The Office's work falls into six areas.

Food safety standards: The hygiene, temperature and contamination controls that every food business must apply, the documented food safety management system it must keep, and the training its staff must hold.
Labelling: The particulars a label must carry, the fourteen allergens that must be declared and emphasised, and the information that must be available for food sold loose. The rules take effect on 1 December 2026.
Inspection: Routine and reactive inspection of registered food businesses by the Office's 26 authorised inspectors, the five-point outcome scale, and the programme of 620 inspections beginning 14 September 2026.
Registration of food businesses: The register of every business that prepares, stores, distributes or sells food in the Network, on which the inspection programme is planned. Businesses operating before 6 September 2026 must register by 30 September.
Food alerts and recalls: Alerts issued when food on sale may be unsafe, the register of withdrawals and recalls, and the supervision of businesses removing a product from sale.
Statistics and reporting: Quarterly releases on registrations, inspections and their outcomes, alerts and recalls, and the capacity of the Office's inspection programme.

How the Office works with businesses. The Office advises before it enforces. A business that is unsure whether its premises, its procedures or its labels meet the rules may write to the Office for an opinion before an inspection takes place, and the inspections carried out during the transition period were used to explain the rules as much as to apply them. Where a business is found not to meet the rules, it is told in writing what must be put right and given a period to do so; prohibition is used only where there is an imminent risk to health. Every outcome may be reviewed by a senior inspector who took no part in the inspection.

For the Office's origins and the milestones since its establishment, see History; for answers to common questions, see the frequently asked questions. General enquiries may be sent to contact@food.gov.vin.