The CIEH and partners have produced free guidance to help businesses determine the shelf-life of ready-to-eat (RTE) foods.
The Shelf-Life Guidance, issued by the UK Chilled Food Association and the British Retail Consortium (BRC), has been designed to help all businesses calculate an accurate safe time period foods can be kept before they are eaten.
It will also help firms meet European microbiology rules for example Regulation (EC) no: 2073/2005, which sets limits on micro-organisms in food, such as Listeria.
The guide covers a range of practical topics including requirements for the safe manufacture of RTE foods, establishing a shelf-life and a checklist for buying RTE ingredients.
It also includes a list of questions and answers about what to do if Listeria monocytogenes are detected at a low level in an individual ingredient of food before the end of shelf life, how to measure pH and advice on when challenge testing would be appropriate.
The document was put together by the CIEH, the Food Standards Agency, the UK Chilled Food Association, the BRC and with the National Reference Laboratory Services for Food Microbiology (Health Protection Agency) participating as an observer.