Food Standards Agency (FSA) chief executive John Harwood said in a report to the organisation's board that many member states regulators were all opposed to the proposal at a meeting with Commission officials last month.

The meeting was held to discuss the Commission's proposals to exempt businesses with less than 10 employees and €2m in sales from the need to follow all the EU rules under the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) requirements.

The proposal arises from the European Commission's bid to streamline regulations and cut administrative burdens on business by 25 per cent by 2012, thus reducing the costs for them.

However regulators and some major food processing organisations have said the proposals would not help improve food safety and that there was already enough flexibility within the current rules to achieve the same ends.

European commission back to board on HACCP due to member states reservations as to whether it would improve food safety.

In his report released yesterday Harwood said the proposal was discussed by the EU's working party of veterinary experts on 13 April. Not one member state representative felt able to accept the proposal as drafted, he reported.

Five or six delegations were strongly against any change in existing HACCP requirements largely on the basis that existing rules, plus the flexibility built into guidance, are sufficient to allow a proportionate approach.

Lithuania, Poland and Latvia spoke strongly for the proposal in principle, but wanted the exclusion criterion based on risk, not business size.

All other member states, including the UK, expressed support for the Commission's policy of reducing administrative burdens, providing any relaxation of the rules did not undermine public health protection.

Some were not convinced that the proposal was necessary at all because existing arrangements provided for a flexible and proportionate approach, he said. Most regulators thought the change would undermine public health protection.

"Basing the proposal on business size, rather than risk, was not in accordance with the General Food Law Regulation, and the Commission had not provided evidence that the current arrangements, which have been in place only a short while, are failing to deliver," Harwood said.

The FSA's reservations are backed up by statistics. Harwood noted that in the UK food produced in establishments employing fewer than 10 employees was responsible for at least 60 per cent of outbreaks of food borne disease from January 2000 to March 2005.

In addition, a food premises survey in 2006 revealed that take-away food businesses, which would almost all fall within the exemption, were by far the greatest risk to public health.

About 20 per cent of such businesses presented a "significant risk to health", he said.

"Clearly, the embedding of food hygiene management principles within such businesses is essential if we are to raise standards and to reduce the risk of those businesses being responsible for food borne disease," he argues.

His comments were made in a report to the board members and released on the FSA site yesterday.

It includes a joint letter sent to the FSA from industry organisations, such as the Food and Drink Federation and Dairy UK, which also argues against the proposed changes.

"Whilst we accept that for certain low risk businesses a fully fledged HACCP

system may not be necessary, we believe that a blanket exemption, based solely on the size of a business, would not be appropriate and would set a dangerous precedent," the organisations stated.

They "fundamentally disagree" as the Commission asserts that the HACCP requirement leads to "unnecessary administration burdens" and is "needlessly time consuming or obsolete".

The associations noted that statistics indicate that within the UK, microenterprises make up 60 per cent of hotels and catering establishments, and 48 per cent of food and beverage manufacturers.

"To remove the HACCP requirement from micro-enterprises would represent a significant retrograde step and would open up the potential for microenterprises to compromise safety in the food chain," the associations stated.

The Commission is now working on a compromise re-drafting of the proposal, which would base the proposed exclusions on risk and clarify which businesses will be exempt, he reported.

Another meeting with regulatory representatives is tentatively scheduled for mid-May, he reported.

The proposed exemption would at first target businesses selling foods directly to the consumer - such as butchers and bakers. However the Commission has suggested that small processors and other businesses could be exempted from the need for full HACCP in the future.

The enlarged exemption would be targeted particularly at businesses that process food in accordance with standard practices and that have had no safety incidents, according to the UK's Food Safety Authority (FSA).

The future expansion is likely to be part of the review to be undertaken not later than 20 May 2009, he said in an e-mail to FoodProductionDaily.com.

In its explanatory memorandum and in drafts, the Commission indicates that the intention is to exempt the businesses from certain aspects of the requirement, namely the record keeping.