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Lone Star Food Control Plan section 40 application

UPDATE – 17 December 2018

A summary of submissions received during the consultation is available to download.

What was proposed?

Lone Star requested approval of its Food Control Plan (FCP) under section 40 of the Food Act 2014.

The Lone Star FCP amended the Ministry for Primary Industries' (MPI's) Food Service and Food Retail FCP (March 2017 version) to include a proprietary process for preparing steak using a combination of sous vide and cook-chill processes.

The Lone Star Plan was tailored specifically for Lone Star restaurant chain franchisees.

MPI evaluated Lone Star's Plan to ensure it met the requirements of the Food Act 2014 and allowed franchisees to prepare and serve safe and suitable food.

We sought your feedback about the proposed plan.

The consultation ran from 3 April 2018 until 5pm on 19 April 2018.

Consultation document

The Lone Star Plan is available only to Lone Star restaurant chain franchisees. However, you can download MPI's evaluation of the Lone Star template.

Background to consultation

The Food Act 2014, which came into effect in March 2016, introduced a risk-based approach to managing food safety. FCPs are written plans that identify food safety risks and set out how they will be managed on a day-to-day basis.

The Food Act 2014 requires that food business operators take responsibility for ensuring food is safe and suitable. Businesses need to be aware of the risks and be able to show how they are managing these. Section 40 of the Food Act 2014 allows MPI's chief executive to approve a template or model FCP which has been developed outside of MPI.

This allows food businesses or industry groups to:

  • develop their own FCP and have it approved so that each business using the plan doesn't need to submit their plan for individual evaluation
  • make adjustments to the MPI templates to include multi-site or multi-business specific procedures or practices, or to reflect common language/terminology used in the business and have those changes approved.

Submissions are public information

Any submission you make becomes public information. Anyone can ask for copies of all submissions under the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA). The OIA states we must make the information available unless we have a good reason for withholding it. You can find those grounds in sections 6 and 9 of the OIA. Tell us if you think there are grounds to withhold specific information in your submission. Reasons might include that it's commercially sensitive or it's personal information. However, any decision MPI makes to withhold information can be reviewed by the Ombudsman, who may require the information be released.