High Court finds FSA charges to meat industry to be unlawful

04/06/26

Headline: High Court finds FSA charges to meat industry to be unlawful

The High Court (Mrs Justice Dias) has handed down judgment in R(AIMS) v. Food Standards Agency [2026] EWHC 1327 (Admin) finding that the Food Standard Agency (FSA's) model of charging fees to UK slaughterhouses for Official Controls (OCs) under the UK onshored version of the Official Controls Regulation 2017/625 (OCR) is unlawful. The Court's judgment will be of wider interest, as it provides important guidance as to the effect of the operation of assimilated EU law following (a) the Retained EU Law etc. Act 2023 , which reverses the pre-Brexit EU law principle of EU-law supremacy, and instead requires that assimilated EU law yield to domestic UK legislation in the event of a conflict; and (b) s 6(3 of the EU Withdrawal Act 2018 EUWA, which mandates that assimilated EU instruments be construed in accordance with relevant pre-Brexit CJEU case-law, even if that instrument has been amended post-Brexit, if to do so would be “consistent with the intention of the modifications” (s. 6(6)). 

The relevant context is that the FSA carries out official controls and other related activities at slaughterhouses and charges two rates: a Main Rate for official controls and an Enforcement Rate for enforcement activity following non-compliance. The Court held that each of those rates includes items for which the FSA was not lawfully entitled to charge on the proper construction of the relevant assimilated and domestic instruments. 

As to the Main Rate, the Court held that the FSA is only entitled to charge for activities “inextricably linked” to the performance of official controls, and rejected the FSA’s position that it could charge for any cost “connected with” official controls. Items such as internal audits, performance management and complaints handling were not “inextricably linked” with official controls and the FSA had unlawfully charged for them.

The Main Rate also unlawfully included the costs of official controls carried out by novice veterinarians. Pursuant to Regulation 2019/624, novice veterinarians are not fully qualified as official veterinarians (as they are yet to complete a mandatory probation period of 200 hours), and are not entitled to carry out official controls independently.

As to the Enforcement Rate, the FSA had unlawfully charged for indirect costs for all of its enforcement activity. The FSA is entitled to charge only for activities “inextricably linked” with enforcement-related official controls; and for other enforcement activity which is not an official control, it can only charge for the costs of that activity. The FSA had also unlawfully charged for written advice, which fell into neither of those categories.

The Court has reserved its decision on the appropriate remedy, which will now be determined at a further hearing.

The judgment is available here.