The Deer Initiative

North West Deer Project

Update from Alastair Boston, North West Deer Project Officer

Best Practice Guides (England and Wales)

Keep checking our Best Practice page as new guides are frequently published.  The guides are ‘live' documents soif you have comments on any of the published guides please let us know.

Amendments to the Hunters Exemption in the Wild Game Guide

The following amendments have been received from the Food Standards Agency

Hunters and Hunter Exemption

For the purposes of the food hygiene regulations, hunters are people who shoot alone or are active members of a hunting party (includes non-shooting gamekeepers, ghillies, beaters and pickers-up, but not mere spectators).

The Hunter Exemption

The hunter exemption recognises the close relationship between the producer and the consumer. It is separate from the primary producer exemption and allows you to supply wild game meat . You can benefit from this exemption if you shoot alone or if you take an active part in a hunting party.

Members of hunting parties and individual hunters are exempt from :

•  having to develop their premises into an approved game handling establishment (AGHE). All game must have been shot by hunting party members (it cannot be sourced from others) and can be prepared into meat by any one (or more) of the party. As with the primary producer exemption , only small quantities may be supplied, either direct to the final consumer or to local retailers that directly supply the meat to final consumers (but not to retail outlets that only supply other retailers).

It is the premises where you prepare meat that have to be local to the retailers you plan to supply and not the place(s) where you shoot. So you can shoot on other people's estates and then bring the game back to your own premises.

The hunter exemption does not exempt you from :

•  being considered as a food business operator;

•  registration of food businesses , traceability , FBOs' responsibilities , HACCP , maintaining the cold chain and the probable need to provide a chiller (see game larders , including temperature controls);

•  requirements for hygienic transport including maintaining the cold chain (both for the in-fur/in-feather game you bring from the shooting area and for the meat you deliver to final consumers/retailers).

The structural and operational hygiene requirements for the premises that you use cover both the way you store primary products (in-fur and in-feather game) and the way you prepare food from them. If a private dwelling house or temporary/movable premises are to be used, then some of the general requirements are adapted.

Estates

•  Where an estate organises shooting, only those who play an active part in the shoot are entitled to the hunter exemption for preparing game meat. Onlookers would be excluded from this category, but non-shooting gamekeepers, stalkers/ghillies or those responsible for gundogs, as beaters, for picking up, etc would be included in this category. So any of these people could be responsible for preparing game meat from carcases back at the designated premises because they were members of the hunting party.

•  If an estate wishes to use its facilities to prepare game meat from game shot or purchased from elsewhere then it must become an approved game handling establishment (AGHE) . Please also see the note on the proposed UK Pilot Project on varying veterinary controls at certain AGHEs.

More details and the full guide can be found here on the Food Standards Agency website.