The high public profile of food is serving up more work for law firms across a range of specialisms, such as health and safety, and more general practice areas. Stephen Ward investigates why grub is big business

Every six months or so, there is a select gathering at The Ivy restaurant in Covent Garden, the heart of London’s theatreland, where movers and shakers from the food industry retire to a private room, eat the finest cuisine and talk about the latest developments in the industry.


Hosted by Birmingham and London firm Wragge & Co and accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, it is a chance to pull together the latest developments in what is becoming a must-have specialism for a growing number of law firms.


However, food law is rarely so concentrated on such a positive view of the end product. It is more often about making sure that what everybody eats day to day is as predictable and safe, if not as elaborate, as the Ivy diners are tucking into.


David Hetherington, a partner in Birmingham firm Margetts & Ritchie, has spent more than a decade representing businesses and directors across the country who have been prosecuted by trading standards and environmental health officials.


These prosecutions are reducing in number now, he says, and thinks this is partly a result of food companies having made sure they have the necessary due diligence to defend a prosecution – even if they have not actually improved their processes to reduce the number of alleged breaches of laws and regulations.


Julian Wild, a mergers and acquisitions specialist who has been in the food industry for 25 years, has just set up a food law department at Rollits, a firm with offices in York and Hull. He says advancing food technology has brought new hazards: ‘You now have to consider things you had never heard of a few years ago – BSE, listeria, salmonella, E.coli – which are all potentially lethal if food, particularly chilled food, is not processed correctly.’ With sterilised long-life canned food, the risks were much lower, he says. ‘People want their food fresher, but by nature that is more dangerous.’ That goes back all along the food chain.


He adds: ‘Retailers now want more traceability, to show the product has been properly handled in the right environment at every stage in the process. The consumer wants to know where the product came from.’


These days, several factors beyond the higher public profile of food have prompted the growth in food law as a sector. Mr Wild points to the growing public awareness of food issues. ‘On the news there is always something about the latest product recall, or obesity in children. The tremendous public interest in food impacts on what is going into food, and food labelling.‘


Then there is the snowballing legislation from Brussels and Westminster. William Juckes, a property partner in the food group at west country firm Clarke Willmott, explains: ‘The EU produces ever-increasing amounts of regulations on hygiene, on labelling, on genetically modified crops. On the horizon are new regulations on nutrition and health claims.


‘The regulations on food are growing, and they are not going to diminish in future.’


In 1990, the Food Safety Act inspired a group of lawyers to set up the Food Law Group. Margaret Murray, a retired partner with Murray Hay in London, and secretary of the group, recalls: ‘There were not many food departments, and specialists tended to be individuals within firms, who needed the group to network with other lawyers and experts.’


Carol Williams, head of legal and company secretary at Northern Foods, and last year’s chairwoman of the Law Society’s commerce and industry group, has seen a steady increase in literature and invitations from law firms advertising a specialism in food law. ‘It’s obviously perceived by private practice firms as a growth market,’ she says.


Ms Williams sees the growing number of food law groups as part of a general increase in sector specialisation by firms – which is driven partly by client demand, and partly by marketing.


Michael Luckman, an intellectual property partner at Wragge & Co, explains the genesis of its food group. ‘We looked at our client list and found some of the bigger names were food companies – HJ Heinz, Cadbury Schweppes, Unilever,’ he says. ‘We realised we have a core expertise here that we could use.’


Having analysed its strengths, the firm set up sector teams with a structure behind them. However, in most firms the food lawyers will not all sit together, but will be organised in disciplines. ‘But what you will find is people who operate in a couple of teams only. The specialist brands person in food won’t be the same as the specialist in automotive and education,’ says Mr Luckman.


Clarke Willmott’s core food group meets every six weeks, and a larger group of its lawyers who work on food matters meets three times a year.


There is consensus too about the core specialisms food draws in. Those include health and safety, and environment law, plus more general practice areas including employment, property, intellectual property, mergers and acquisitions and contract compliance, which will be called in as needed.


There are big differences in the way law firms define which clients should be included in food as a sector, however – indicating that food law is still not mature as an area of legal practice.


Clarke Willmott includes three subdivisions of food law: manufacture, retail and leisure, and licensing. DWF in the north-west, which set up a food group in 2002, includes all sectors – from animal food to retail – under food law. It adds licensing to the mix as well.


Wragge & Co, on the other hand, firmly separates food from retail. In Mr Luckman’s view: ‘There is a danger in putting too much in.’ Retail clients’ legal issues are largely property-led, he says. ‘They have the same supply issues, but by and large come from the other end of the telescope. They want to screw suppliers down and get the best possible terms,’ he says.


‘In our food group, we focus very much on what would be in the automotive industry the original equipment manufacturers – the big names who control the food supply chain. They are the people contracting with the farmers and the producers to secure ingredients, manufacture them and push them down the retail supply chain.’


Ms Williams is sceptical about whether food is a sufficiently homogeneous area to justify a specialist group. ‘I think it is more important to understand a particular client than to have sector knowledge,’ she suggests. But she concedes there could be a need among companies smaller than hers that do not have a strong in-house department, but are still large enough to be able to afford firms big enough to run a specialist department.


While the food market has never been more global, with fresh strawberries and courgettes air-freighted into the UK 12 months a year, the food groups’ client-bases are often locally-based.


DWF acts for 30 food companies, and most have their head offices in the north-west, even if they have national and international operations.


Clarke Willmott has increased its client base by a link with South West Food & Drink, which is organised by the regional development agency. Rollits has tapped into the local East Yorkshire and Humber market – the food processors which grew up around the fish ports of Hull and Grimsby. ‘We have clients in the chilled food area. That includes branded frozen foods, edible oils, salads and several fish clients.’


Mr Wild thinks the legal food sector will grow. ‘There is a lot of work out there, and we don’t need to be killing each other in the market-place,’ he says. ‘There is a lot of opportunity to work together to improve the overall legal offering.’


Stephen Ward is a freelance journalist