Epha Food Hygiene Regulations

[Stephaine Zitzow]

Asan experience host, you get to share your passion with travellers from around the world. This article can help you share your passion responsibly. You design and control your experience listing, what service you offer, when and where you host, and what you charge. It is your responsibility to be aware of and comply with all legal and regulatory requirements when hosting your experience.

This page contains information about responsible hosting in Singapore. We also have articles that contain general information about hosting experiences anywhere in the world, which you can find in the Responsible hosting section of our Help Center.

Additionally, the Singapore Food Agency (SFA) has published a Good Food Hygiene Tips guide for residents preparing food under the above URA or HDB schemes, which you should abide by. You must also comply with the rules and regulations of the Fire Safety and Shelter Department requirements for Home Offices found here.

If you are unsure as to whether your experience qualifies as a Home Based Small Business, we encourage you to reach out to the URA or HDB or speak to your lawyer to make sure you are following the laws.

Under the EPHA, you may be required to obtain a Food Shop licence if you are considered to be operating a "food establishment". Under the EPHA, "food" includes drinks (alcoholic and non-alcoholic). The use of any premises for the commercial preparation of food or for sale of food by retail or for providing a catering service may require a Food Shop licence. Licensees are also required to comply with various requirements under the Environmental Public Health (Food Hygiene) Regulations including having the individuals who are involved in the preparation and handling of food complete a food hygiene course before allowing them to prepare or handle food.

If your experience qualifies as a Home Based Small Business, it is unlikely that you will be required to obtain a Food Shop licence. We encourage you to reach out to the Singapore Food Agency or speak to your lawyer to confirm that this is the case. You should be aware that there is potential criminal liability for failure to obtain the requisite Food Shop licence which may include financial penalties and/or jail.

Food is on the table at the negotiations for the EU-US trade deal the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). From a look at their lobbying demands, the agribusiness industry seems to regard the treaty as a perfect weapon to counter existing and future food regulations. However, the corporate food and agriculture agenda has not gone un-noticed. The negotiations face rough weather as more and more people on both sides of the Atlantic are understanding what we stand to lose from this agreement.

One of the main aims of TTIP is to facilitate trade by removing differences in legislation between the EU and the US. There are strong concerns that the TTIP negotiations will therefore lead to the watering down of European food safety standards, and other agriculture and food-related policies1. But TTIP could also be used to attack positive food-related initiatives in the US, particularly at the state level, such as local preference legislation (i.e. giving preference to local suppliers).

Political leaders from both the US and EU have made attempts to counter the concerns raised over the risks TTIP poses to food and farming. For example, in February the EU Trade Commissioner Karel de Gucht addressed fears that TTIP could create a 'race to the bottom' by saying: "We are not lowering standards in TTIP. Our standards on consumer protection, on the environment, on data protection and on food are not up for negotiation. There is no 'give and take' on standards in TTIP."2 Similarly, on a visit to Brussels in March US President Obama said: "I have fought my entire political career and as President to strengthen consumer protections. I have no intention of signing legislation that would weaken those protections."3

Lobbying from the agribusiness and food industry over TTIP has also been intensive on the European side. CEO's analysis of numbers of lobbying encounters between industry groups and the European Commission (only taking into account its Directorate-General for Trade, 'DG Trade'), between January 2012 and April 2013, shows that agribusiness-related lobby groups by far outnumber all other sectors.5 Not only that: DG Trade indeed has been actively chasing some of the industry lobbies for their wishlists. An email from DG Trade obtained by CEO, dated 26 October 2012, sent to the pesticide lobby group ECPA (European Crop Protection Association - BASF, Bayer Crop Science, Syngenta, Monsanto), encourages ECPA to participate in a consultation on TTIP. DG Trade writes: "A substantial contribution from your side, ideally sponsored by your US partner, would be vital to start identifying opportunities of closer cooperation and increased compatibility."6 In response, a few weeks later ECPA and CropLife America put forward their joint demands.7

In this article we are looking at some of the agribusiness positions, so much sought-after by the Commission. Two in particular: the set of demands put forward by ECPA and Croplife America mentioned above, and a joint position by food industry lobby group FoodDrinkEurope, with Europe's mainstream farmers' lobby, COPA-COGECA, both published in 2014.8

- They demand that policies and standards should be based on 'sound science'. In reality this means 'industry-friendly science' and a direct attack on the use of the precautionary principle.

- The 'mutual recognition' and 'harmonisation/equivalence' of standards in food and agriculture as a first step. Differences in rules between the EU and the US that are seen as 'trade-distorting' by industry would be dealt with by mutual recognition of each other's standards, or going further and harmonising them. The implementation phase of regulation provides another opportunity for standards to be attacked without changing the laws as such.

- Regulatory cooperation is the ultimate goal, with the aim to jointly review existing rules or standards that are seen as barriers to trade, and prevent new ones in the future.

From tobacco to climate change, there is a long history of industry tactics to create doubt over the scientific evidence, paying studies to maintain this doubt alive in the media and attacking any unwanted evidence as 'junk science' as opposed to 'sound science'. In a hard hitting column published in Nature, science writer Colin Macilwain says: "The term 'sound science' has become Orwellian double-speak for various forms of pro-business spin."9

Yet whilst demanding more 'sound science', at the same time industry conceals the data produced by its research. Industry is demanding strong rules for confidentiality of business information within TTIP13, and fighting transparency initiatives wherever they pop up. For instance, a chorus of biotech, pesticide and even food lobbies have made their opposition loud and clear to an EFSA initiative to facilitate public access to data from safety studies done by the industry,14 a long standing demand from civil society and scientists alike.

Mutual recognition means easier market access for exporters. But it can be a very damaging approach from an environmental and public health perspective. As consumer group the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) says: Mutual recognition of standards is not an acceptable approach since it will require at least one of the parties to accept food that is not up to the requirements for domestic products."21 TACD and other NGOs have identified many areas where the mutual recognition of different protection levels would create serious problems, for example for animal welfare rules, food labelling, and hygiene- and safety-standards in the food and agriculture sector, including those rules relating to GMOs and pesticides. And while mutual recognition can be bad for consumers, it can also be a threat to farmers' and food producers' livelihoods as it leads to unfair competition. This is likely to lead to internal pressure for lowering standards in the EU. (See box 2).

For the industry, mutual recognition is only the first step. After US standards on pesticides, for example, are accepted by the EU for products that it imports, the next step for the industry is to get those standards in the EU down to the same lower level. For instance, the pesticide lobby document by Croplife and ECPA demands "significant harmonisation" between the US and EU rules for establishing limits for how much of a pesticide can remain in food and feed products.

ECPA and Croplife explicitly add that a system of regulatory cooperation would prevent "bad decisions", avoiding them having to take governments to court later. This clearly hints at the situation of their member corporations, biotech and pesticide giants Syngenta and Bayer, who are taking the European Commission to court over its partial ban on three insecticides from the neonicotinoid family, because of their deadly impact on bees.

If TTIP is to include an Investor to State Dispute Settlement mechanism (ISDS), corporations will have an even stronger tool to sue either of the two blocs, or individual EU member states, including for measures taken at a lower governmental level. Even if progressive forces were to seize more power in the EU and/or in the US, pushing for higher safety levels or the ban of certain substances, the industry will fight back in private international investor-state tribunals. Since Syngenta for instance is based in Switzerland, but is also registered in the EU and US, could it not sue both of them? When this question was posed at a Brussels conference to Syngenta Chief John Atkin he replied, laughing: "Yes! All of the above. We are a good example of a global company."

The idea of industry and the Commission behind regulatory cooperation is to make TTIP a 'living agreement', with ongoing negotiations, therefore not confined to what they can agree on in the short term. Even if the final TTIP text does not include explicit concessions on food or environmental standards, regulatory cooperation would pave the way for these concessions in the future. This makes it one of the most dangerous part of TTIP, which will lock in future policy making in many different areas.

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