Why your food safety legal register may be missing legislation

Why many compliance registers are incomplete

One of the most common issues identified during audits is that a relevant piece of legislation is missing from the food safety legal register.

In most cases, this is because the business wasn’t aware that the legislation existed or applied to them.

This typically happens when:

• Only headline or well-known regulations are tracked.
• Secondary or supporting legislation is overlooked.
• There is no structured method for identifying legally linked acts.

As a result, key legal obligations are missed — not through negligence, but through a lack of visibility.

In most cases, this can be traced back to a misunderstanding of how primary and secondary legislation work together, and where the detailed, enforceable requirements actually sit.

Primary legislation

Primary legislation sets the legal framework. In food law, primary legislation typically:

• Establishes overarching principles.
• Defines responsibilities.
• Sets out enforcement powers.
• Enables further legislation to be adopted.

What primary legislation does not usually do is provide detailed, operational requirements. Those details are deliberately left to secondary legislation.

Primary legislation titles

Primary legislation usually has a broad, framework-style title. For example, titles commonly include phrases such as:

• on general food law
• laying down general principles and requirements
• establishing rules for…

These titles signal that the legislation sets out the overall legal structure, rather than detailed operational requirements.

Secondary legislation

Secondary legislation sits underneath the primary legislation. Secondary legislation is where much of the detailed, enforceable legal requirement is introduced. Secondary legislation commonly:

• Introduces specific legal requirements that must be translated into site controls.
• Sets conditions, limits, parameters, or technical rules.
• Adds practical obligations for particular products, processes, or activities.
• Amends or supplements requirements already set out in primary legislation.

This includes:

• Implementing acts.
• Delegated acts.
• Amending regulations.

Secondary legislation titles

Legislation doesn’t have version numbers. Each time an amendment or additional piece of information must be published, a new secondary legislation is created. Therefore, each piece of secondary legislation has its own title and will reference the primary legislation.

Titles commonly include wording such as:

• …implementing [Regulation X]
• …amending [Regulation X]
• …supplementing [Regulation X]
• …pursuant to [Regulation X]

This wording is not incidental — it is the legal indicator that the legislation:

• Does not create a new standalone framework.
• Introduces additional or modified requirements under an existing primary regulation.

For example:

Primary legislation

Commission Regulation (EU) 2022/1616 of 15 September 2022 on recycled plastic materials and articles intended to come into contact with foods, and repealing Regulation (EC) No 282/2008

Secondary legislation

Commission Regulation (EU) 2025/2269 of 12 November 2025 correcting Regulation (EU) 2022/1616 as regards labelling of recycled plastic, the development of recycling technologies and the transfer of authorisations.

Consolidated text

When you look up legislation, you will often see something called a consolidated text.

A consolidated text is not a separate piece of legislation. It is a separate document that includes the original law that has been updated to include later changes. The consolidated text is what we would expect to see if legislation was version controlled – it basically includes all the changes up to the point at which the consolidated text was published.

In simple terms, it shows:

• The original legislation, plus
• All amendments that have been made to it over time,
  combined into a single, readable document.

This is why consolidated texts are often labelled “current version” or “consolidated version”.

Why this matters at audit

Although it may seem that auditors only assess compliance based on whether a regulation appears on the food safety legal register, they are actually trying to establish if:

• Your business understands which legislation applies.
• The correct requirements have been identified.
• Those requirements are reflected in site controls.

Where secondary legislation has not been identified or assessed, compliance gaps are likely.

What a complete approach looks like

A robust legislative approach treats primary and secondary legislation as one legal system, not separate documents.

In practice, this means:

• Identifying the primary legislation first.
• Mapping all legally linked secondary acts beneath it.
• Assessing each linked act for applicability.
• Reflecting applicable requirements in procedures and controls.

This approach ensures that no obligations sit outside the business’s visibility.

Where Smart Knowledge Plus fits

At Techni-K, we see the same pattern repeatedly: businesses are not non-compliant because they ignore legislation, but because the structure of food law is complex and misunderstood. It also takes a huge amount of time track the relevant legislation and the associated changes.

Smart Knowledge Plus addresses this by:

• Structuring legislation into clear hierarchies.
• Linking primary legislation to all relevant secondary acts.
• Highlighting which obligations actually require action.
• Removing the guesswork from legislative interpretation.

We monitor 100s of legislation changes each week, so that you don’t have to – the result is that you have access to a complete and verified legal framework.

Smart Knowledge Plus

Join now, and gain access to our legislation library – to save yourself the headache of trying to keep your food safety legal register up to date with legislation updates.

For more information please contact info@techni-k.co.uk or hit the chat button on the bottom corner of your screen.