Who's Keeping Record?

Dawn

Hi,
 
A friend of mine gave me your contact details.
 
I know I am not a jam maker, but wondered whether you could help with this question. As a cake maker do I have to have complete traceability of my ingredients in the products I sell, that are not packaged i.e slices of cakes etc sold at a local shop and markets.
 
Kind Regards
 
Dawn


Hi Dawn – thanks for the contact.
 
I don’t know for sure, as regards the Law. Thinking back to my Country Market days, I don’t think that it has to be displayed – you don’t see it in other tea rooms for instance.
 
However, there are reasons for all of these regulations – as jam makers we have to keep batch records, the jars are marked with the batch number, the record book lists the source of the recipe, plus the suppliers of the key ingredients. Bear in mind that jam isn’t considered a risk product.
 
If someone – or several people – report being ill after eating something then Trading Standards have to try and find out why. They will go to the retailer first, who will turn to you, and you need to be able to turn to your supplier etc so that each area can be looked at for the problem. This needs to be done as fast as possible to prevent it happening again, and makes perfect sense.
 
With things like this you need to put yourself in the place of the customer. If it was you, and/or your children that were made ill by a product you would want something done about it. Keeping batch records doesn’t make much extra work and then you can sleep easily at night – except for all of the other problems you have running a business!
 
I hope that is helpful
 
Kind regards
 
Rosemary
 

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