What I’ve Learned From More Than 24 Years as a Food Safety Consultants in the UK
Reviewed by Katie Watkins Young MCIEH, CEnvH, FIFST, RPFAM, RFoodSMSenior Food Safety Director & Managing Director, Beacon Compliance
When people search for Food Safety Consultants UK, they are often looking for something quite specific. They may have a SALSA audit coming up, be working towards BRCGS certification, need a HACCP system reviewing, or have reached a point where their food business has grown beyond what they can comfortably manage themselves.
I understand that position because I have worked on both sides of food safety.
Before founding Beacon Compliance in 2018, I spent more than 24 years working across the food industry, starting as a Chartered Environmental Health Officer before moving into technical and quality roles within food manufacturing. I have worked with major food brands, been responsible for products supplied to retailers including M&S, Tesco, ASDA and Morrisons, and worked as a third-party auditor. Today, I use that experience to help food businesses deal with the practical reality of compliance rather than simply telling them what the rules say.
That distinction is important to me. Food safety systems need to be technically sound, but they also need to work when you are actually producing food on a busy Monday morning.
What does a food safety consultant actually do?
There is sometimes a misconception that a food safety consultant simply arrives, looks through a folder of documents and tells you what is wrong. Good consultancy should be much more useful than that.
The role of a food safety consultant can cover everything from HACCP development and food safety management systems to internal audits, certification preparation, food labelling, supplier approval, laboratory testing and ongoing technical support. At Beacon Compliance, we work with family food businesses, growing brands and established manufacturers, so the type of support required can be very different from one client to another.
Sometimes a business needs someone to build a system from the ground up. Other times, the system already exists but has gradually become difficult to manage, hasn't kept pace with changes to the operation, or simply isn't being used effectively by the people on the production floor. That is where experience becomes particularly valuable.
Food safety compliance has to work in the real world
One of the things I have learned over the years is that a beautifully written procedure is not necessarily a good food safety system.
I have seen the difference between documentation that looks impressive during an audit and a system that genuinely reflects what happens in a production environment. If a procedure says one thing but the team actually works another way, you have a problem regardless of how professional the paperwork looks.
This is one of the reasons we take a practical approach at Beacon Compliance. Our aim is to understand how the business operates and then make sure the food safety controls, records and procedures reflect that operation. Beacon describes this as a hands-on approach rather than a “one size fits all” service, and that is very much how I believe consultancy should be delivered.
There is also a commercial side to this. Food safety compliance should protect the business, but it should not unnecessarily make the business harder to run.
HACCP should be at the heart of your food safety system
For UK food businesses, HACCP is not simply another certification document to complete before an audit. Food safety management procedures must be based on HACCP principles, with businesses identifying hazards, establishing critical control points where appropriate, setting limits, monitoring controls, taking corrective action and keeping appropriate records.
The three broad categories of food safety hazards are microbiological, chemical and physical. In practice, however, understanding the hazards is only the beginning. The important question is how those hazards relate to the particular products, processes, people, equipment and premises within your business.
That is why I am wary of generic HACCP templates.
A HACCP system should describe your business. If your process changes, your HACCP should change with it. If you introduce a new product, piece of equipment, ingredient or production method, the potential hazards and controls need to be considered again.
Government guidance also makes clear that food safety procedures and records need to be kept up to date and reviewed so they continue to reflect what the business actually produces and how it operates.
When does a business need a food safety consultant?
There isn't one particular stage at which every food business suddenly needs a consultant.
Some businesses come to us very early. They may be developing a new product or preparing to move from small-scale production into retail and realise that the technical requirements are becoming more complicated.
Others have been trading for years and reach a different kind of crossroads. They may have an audit approaching, a key member of their technical team has left, a retailer has introduced new requirements, or they simply know that their existing systems need an independent review.
I also see businesses that have grown quickly. The systems that were perfectly adequate when there were three people in the business can become much harder to manage when there are 20, 50 or 100 people involved.
Growth changes the risk profile of a business, and the food safety system needs to grow with it.
Preparing for SALSA certification
For smaller and growing food businesses, SALSA can be an important step towards demonstrating that they have robust food safety systems in place.
SALSA is designed specifically for small and micro food producers and can provide an important route to demonstrating food safety and legal compliance to customers, retailers and other buyers.
The mistake I see businesses make is treating the audit itself as the main objective. The real objective should be building a system that you can maintain after the auditor has left.
That means understanding your HACCP, having the right procedures in place, keeping appropriate records and making sure the people responsible for the day-to-day operation understand what they are doing and why.
At Beacon, our SALSA support can include gap analysis, system development, implementation, pre-audit assessment and ongoing support.
I always encourage clients to get their audit date booked rather than waiting until they feel completely ready. Once there is a date in the diary, it gives the whole team something tangible to work towards and helps prioritise what actually needs to be done. That is advice I give from experience, rather than simply because it sounds good on a consultancy website.
When BRCGS becomes part of the conversation
The requirements become more extensive when a business is moving towards BRCGS certification.
The BRCGS Global Standard Food Safety is widely used across the food manufacturing, processing and packing sector and is recognised by major brands and retailers. The current standard is Issue 9, and it covers areas including product safety, legality, authenticity, quality and operational controls.
For many businesses, BRCGS is not simply about producing more documentation. It requires a much more developed approach to food safety management, internal auditing, corrective action, traceability, food safety culture and continual improvement.
The preparation therefore needs to start well before the certification audit.
I have worked in manufacturing environments where technical requirements had to be balanced against production pressures, customer expectations and commercial realities. That experience is particularly useful when preparing a business for certification because I understand that a requirement has to be translated into something people can actually implement.
BRCGS itself recommends assessing your operation against the requirements of the standard before the certification audit and selecting a registered certification body to carry out the audit.
A consultant should help you prepare for that process, but should never create a false sense that certification is guaranteed.
What about businesses that don't have an in-house technical team?
This is one of the areas where external food safety consultancy can make a significant difference.
Not every food business needs, or can justify, a full-time technical manager. A smaller manufacturer might need technical expertise for a few days a month rather than five days a week. Another business may need intensive support for a particular certification project and then a lower level of ongoing assistance.
That is why I don't believe there is a single consultancy model that works for everybody.
The right level of support depends on the size of the business, the products being manufactured, the complexity of the processes, customer requirements, certification standards and, importantly, the competence already available within the business.
Our role can therefore range from helping someone understand what they need to do, through to taking a much more hands-on role in developing and implementing their technical systems.
Food safety consultancy should also understand the commercial side
This is probably one of the biggest differences between consultancy based purely on regulations and consultancy based on experience.
A food business exists to make and sell food. It has customers, employees, production targets, cash-flow pressures, retailers, suppliers and plans for growth. Food safety sits across all of those areas.
If a control is impractical, people may stop following it.
If documentation is unnecessarily complicated, records may not be completed properly.
If a process isn't understood by the people carrying it out, the fact that it is written beautifully in a procedure doesn't make the food any safer.
My experience in industry taught me to look at compliance through that wider lens. The question isn't only, “Does this meet the requirement?” I also want to know, “Will this work for the people who have to use it every day?”
Why independent audits can be valuable
There is a useful difference between checking your own work and asking someone independent to challenge it.
Internal audits are an important part of maintaining food safety systems, and an independent review can sometimes identify things that have become invisible to the people working within the business every day.
That might be a documentation issue, an overlooked hazard, a weakness in traceability, an inconsistency between a written procedure and what happens in production, or simply an area where the business could be operating more effectively.
Beacon provides independent internal food safety audits to help businesses identify weaknesses and opportunities for improvement before certification bodies, customers or regulators identify them.
I don't see an audit as an exercise in trying to catch people out. The purpose should be to find the problems while you still have the opportunity to fix them.
My experience has shaped the way I consult
I think clients benefit from knowing who they are taking advice from.
My career started in local authority environmental health, which gave me an understanding of food safety from a regulatory and enforcement perspective. I then moved into food manufacturing and technical management, where the decisions have to work within the realities of production, customers and commercial pressures.
I have worked with major food brands and retailers, carried out third-party auditing and built my experience across different parts of the food industry. I founded Beacon Compliance in 2018 because I could see a gap for practical, client-focused technical support, particularly for smaller businesses that didn't necessarily have access to that level of expertise internally.
Today, my role as Senior Food Safety Director and Managing & Business Development Director allows me to bring those different experiences together.
I am a Chartered Environmental Health Officer and hold a BSc (Hons) in Environmental Health, Level 4 qualifications in Food Safety Management and HACCP, ISO 22000 Lead Auditor status, and professional recognition through the Institute of Food Science and Technology, including Fellow of the Institute and registration as a Food Safety Manager.
Those qualifications are important, but so is the experience behind them. Food safety is an area where understanding the theory is essential, but knowing how that theory behaves in a real business is equally important.
Choosing food safety consultants in the UK
If you are looking for Food Safety Consultants UK, I would encourage you to look beyond the list of services on a website.
Ask about the consultant's actual food industry experience. Have they worked in manufacturing? Have they dealt with certification audits? Do they understand HACCP beyond simply writing a plan? Have they worked with businesses similar to yours?
Most importantly, ask whether they are going to give you a system that you can actually operate.
At Beacon Compliance, we work with food manufacturers, producers, retailers and hospitality businesses across the UK, supporting areas including HACCP, SALSA, BRCGS, laboratory testing, internal audits and wider food safety compliance.
Our approach is deliberately practical. We want our clients to understand their systems rather than become dependent on a folder of documents that only comes out when an auditor is visiting.
My advice if you're worried about an upcoming audit
Don't wait until everything feels perfect before asking for help.
In my experience, businesses often know there are areas they need to improve but keep putting the work off because there is always something more urgent happening in production. The problem is that the closer you get to an audit, the less time you have to make sensible changes.
Book the audit, establish where you are now, and work backwards from there.
That is one of the simplest pieces of advice I give clients: don't wait until you feel ready. Set the date and let that date focus the strategy.
It doesn't mean rushing through the process. It means giving the business a clear objective and enough time to address the things that genuinely need attention.
Food safety compliance should give you confidence, not just paperwork
After more than two decades in the industry, I have become increasingly convinced that good food safety consultancy should leave a business feeling more in control.
You should understand your risks. Your team should understand the procedures that apply to them. Your records should reflect what is actually happening. Your HACCP should make sense for your processes, and your certification preparation should be based on the reality of your operation rather than a last-minute attempt to make everything look compliant.
That is the approach I wanted to build when I founded Beacon Compliance, and it remains the way I believe food safety consultancy should be delivered.
Whether you are a small producer preparing for SALSA, a growing food brand looking towards BRCGS, or an established manufacturer that needs additional technical support, the starting point is the same: understand the business first, then build the food safety system around it.
About Katie Watkins Young
Katie Watkins Young MCIEH, CEnvH, FIFST, RPFAM, RFoodSM is Senior Food Safety Director and Managing & Business Development Director at Beacon Compliance.
Katie founded Beacon Compliance in 2018 and has more than 24 years of experience across the food industry. Her career has included local authority environmental health, senior technical and quality positions within food manufacturing, third-party auditing and consultancy. She has worked with leading food brands and products supplied to major UK retailers, and has extensive knowledge of SALSA, BRCGS and wider food safety and regulatory requirements.
She holds qualifications including BSc (Hons) Environmental Health, Level 4 Food Safety Management, Level 4 HACCP and ISO 22000 Lead Auditor, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Food Science and Technology and an IFST Registered Food Safety Manager.
For more information about Katie and her experience, visit Katie Watkins Young at Beacon Compliance.
Further guidance
For current UK guidance on food safety management systems and HACCP principles, see GOV.UK food safety management systems guidance.
For current UK guidance on managing food safety, including HACCP, traceability, allergens, labelling and recalls, see GOV.UK managing food safety guidance.
For information about the BRCGS Food Safety Standard and certification process, see BRCGS Food Safety.
For Beacon Compliance's food safety consultancy services, visit Beacon Compliance food safety consultancy services.
