Simply Safe & Suitable template Food Control Plan and the Food Notice: Food Service and Food Retail Business Food Control Plan templates issued under section 39

UPDATE – 29 August 2025

Updated notice and templates issued

Following this consultation, we updated the Simply Safe & Suitable Template Food Control Plan, issued an updated Food Notice, and released the summary of submissions.

Summary of submissions [PDF, 424 KB]

Simply Safe & Suitable Template Food Control Plan (colour A5) [PDF, 3.3 MB]

Simply Safe & Suitable Template Food Control Plan (black and white A4) [PDF, 3.2 MB]

Food Notice: Food Service and Food Retail Business Food Control Plan templates issued under section 39 [PDF, 344 KB]

Consultation background

New Zealand Food Safety sought feedback on the proposed changes to the:

Simply Safe & Suitable template Food Control Plan (FCP)
Food Notice: Food Service and Food Retail Business Food Control Plan templates issued under section 39.

A summary of the changes is on this page and full details are in the consultation documents.

Submissions closed at 11:59pm on 1 June 2025.

Consultation document

Draft Food Notice: Food Service and Food Retail Business Food Control Plan templates issued under section 39 [PDF, 386 KB]

Only the affected parts of Simply Safe & Suitable are provided. Changes to wording are in yellow, except for the addition of the 'Making biltong' card:

Draft Simply Safe & Suitable template Food Control Plan [PDF, 1.2 MB]

Proposed changes to the Simply Safe & Suitable template FCP

We proposed to add the 'Making biltong' card as a specialist card to the Simply Safe & Suitable template FCP.

New Zealand Food Safety developed a biltong procedure that will allow biltong manufacturers to operate under a Simply Safe & Suitable template FCP rather than a custom FCP.

Note: If you are manufacturing and selling biltong outside the scope of the procedure proposed to be added to the Simply Safe & Suitable template FCP, you will need to register a custom FCP with the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI). Activities out of scope of this biltong procedure include:

whole selling biltong (the 'Making biltong' card will only cover retail sale)
manufacturing other dried-meat snacks (for example, droëwors)
making biltong from other meat sources not mentioned in the 'Making biltong' card.

Minor amendments were also proposed to other cards in the Simply Safe & Suitable template FCP. These are listed in our summary document.

Proposed changes to the Food Notice

For the Food Notice: Food Service and Food Retail Business Food Control Plan templates issued under section 39, New Zealand Food Safety proposed to:

remove reference to S39-00001 template FCP as New Zealand Food Safety no longer offers this
revoke the existing Schedule 1 which detailed the format of the S39-00001 template FCP
change the existing Schedule 2 to Schedule 1 which details the format of the S39-00004 template FCP
update the transitional requirements described in Clause 1.4
update Table 1 to reflect changes made.

Submissions are public information

Note that all, part, or a summary of your submission may be published on this website. Most often this happens when we issue a document that reviews the submissions received.

People can also ask for copies of submissions under the Official Information Act 1982 (OIA). The OIA says we must make the content of submissions available unless we have good reason for withholding it. Those reasons are detailed in sections 6 and 9 of the OIA.

If you think there are grounds to withhold specific information from publication, make this clear in your submission or contact us. Reasons may include that it discloses commercially sensitive or personal information. However, any decision MPI makes to withhold details can be reviewed by the Ombudsman, who may direct us to release it.

Official Information Act 1982 – NZ Legislation

Simply Safe & Suitable template Food Control Plan and the Food Notice: Food Service and Food Retail Business Food Control Plan templates issued under section 39

Closing date

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