Selling meat to other businesses

Many butchers and farm shops sell to the public first. Then a pub or a café nearby asks for a regular order. Supplying another business can bring in a second set of food hygiene rules.

Registered, or approved

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) says most food businesses that don't need approval must register with their local council. Approval is a further step. The FSA says some premises need it when they handle meat, fish, eggs or dairy foods and supply other establishments.

GOV.UK says a business that handles meat must tell its council what it plans to do. The council then decides whether the business needs approval or registration, and whether an exemption applies.

A business that needs approval must not begin that work until it holds at least a conditional approval.

Why a shop is treated differently

The hygiene rules for meat and other foods of animal origin generally leave out retail. They come back in when a retailer prepares food to supply another establishment.

In food law, retail covers more than shops. It includes restaurants, canteens, caterers and other food service businesses. A butcher who supplies a local restaurant is therefore supplying another retail business.

The small-scale exemption

Food hygiene law has an exemption for this kind of trade. A retailer needs no approval when it supplies food of animal origin "to other retail establishments only", and that supply "is a marginal, localised and restricted activity". All three words have to apply.

For Scotland, Food Standards Scotland sets limits for each word in its protocol for council officers, in the version published in May 2026.

Food Standards Scotland also says the shop must make genuine sales to the public. In every part of the UK, the business tells its council what it plans, and the council decides whether the exemption applies.

Growing past the limits

Food Standards Scotland gives the example of a retail butcher who wants to supply more than 2 tonnes a week to shops and caterers. That butcher moves from registration to approval.

For the premises the FSA approves, its officials check the equipment, the building and the business's food safety management system. Within three months of approval, an official comes back to look at production and hygiene.

The marks on trade meat

Meat from an approved premises has to leave with a health mark or an identification mark. The business must apply its identification mark before the meat leaves its premises.

When a business unwraps meat or works on it further, it must apply a new mark with its own approval number. A business may take a health mark off meat only when it cuts, processes or otherwise works on that meat.

Records for each delivery

A business that supplies meat to another business must make these details available to its customer, and on request to the authorities, for each consignment:

The supplier must update the details every day. They stay available until the food can reasonably be assumed to have been eaten. The supplier chooses how to present them, as long as the customer can find and read them.

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