TheNational Federation of Fish Friers is a trade organisation representing the fish and chip industry. First established in 1913, throughout its long history the NFFF has worked towards protecting and promoting the interests of the UK’s fish friers. Still today, we are the only national organisation that can speak and act on behalf of fish friers, we always strive to promote best practice through our members, the training school and with our NFFF Fish and Chip Quality Award scheme, which promotes shops throughout the UK that give their customers the best quality fish and chips.

Over the past few months National Federation of Fish Friers has been working in partnership with the Food Standard Agency (FSA) to produced guidelines and documents to help members prepare for the EU Food Information for Consumers Regulation legislation coming enforce on the 13th December 2014. We also provide members with a 24 hour advice line, so any issue large or small the fish and chip shop owner has the National Federation of Fish Friers on call to provide a service.

While we understand the plight of the many allergen sufferers, many Fish & Chip shops now sell gluten-free Fish & Chips. However, this is yet another administrative burden placed on small businesses.

Putting together this information is a significant task even if the business has a small menu, however, once all the interest in the new regulations dies down, we are still stuck with them. Constant vigilance will be required on receipt of deliveries in case a supplier has altered a pie recipe for example, there is no requirement for Fish Friers to be directly informed of any changes to the ingredients of the products we buy other than the list of ingredients on the packaging, we must therefore check EVERY delivery for any changes to this list of ingredients. This is in addition to recording the temperature and use by dates for our deliveries.

The National Federation of Fish Friers, has offered support to all its members and tried to reach out to all Fish and Chip shop owners across the UK to set and raise the standard of the food sector as a whole.

I hope this gives you an insight into the consequences of the new regulations for Fish & Chip shops, the majority of which are small family run businesses.