Food standards and food safety correspondence: EIR release

Information requested

• All meetings between the Minister of Public Health and Minister for Trade relating to food standards, trade deals and or food safety inspections since May 2021.
• All correspondence between the Minister of Public Health and Minister for Trade relating to food standards, trade deals and or food safety inspections since May 2021.
• All briefings given to the Minister of Public Health regarding food standards and food safety since May 2021.

Response

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

In response to your request, we have considered food standards and food safety in a broad sense and have included information relating to the following categories as being within scope of your request: food composition and fortification, nutritional requirements, quality of food, food contamination, nutritional labelling and any safety incidents.

Food Standards Scotland (FSS) are the public sector food body for Scotland. FSS work independently from Government and have responsibility for advising Scottish Ministers on matters relating to food standards and food safety.

With reference to your 3rd question, information considered to be within scope which was held by Scottish Government at the time of your request has been listed in the enclosed 'Table of Documents'. The majority of this information has originated from FSS and they are responsible for retaining records of briefings that they have sent to Ministers. They may hold additional information that could be within the scope of your third question, therefore you may wish to submit a separate EIR request to them at
enquiries@fss.scot.

In response to your first and second question, while our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested. Therefore, we are refusing your request under the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs. The reasons why that exception applies are explained in the Annex to this letter.

In response to your third question, while our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because exceptions under regulations Reg 10(4)(d) (Material in the course of completion, unfinished documents, or incomplete data), Reg 10(4)(e) (Internal communications), Reg 10(5)(d) (Confidentiality of proceedings provided for by law, Reg 10(5)(e)(Confidentiality of commercial or industrial information, provided for by law to protect legitimate economic interest) and Reg 11(2)(Personal data relating to third party) of the EIRs applies to that information. The reasons why these exceptions apply are explained in the Annex to this letter.

Please find enclosed the information in scope of your request.

Due to the size of the files we are unable to upload the documents referred to above.

If you wish to consider, please contact us at the address below and we will be happy to provide.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.