The primary UK legislation is the Food Safety Act 1990. All local authorities are required to appoint a Public Analyst, although there have always been fewer Public Analysts and their laboratories than local authorities, most being shared by a number of local authorities. On the UK mainland there has always been a mixture of public sector and private sector laboratories. This remains the case today - but they all provide an equivalent service, and avoidance of conflicts of interest are ensured by the statutory terms of appointment. There is a statutory qualification requirement for Public Analysts, known as the Mastership in Chemical Analysis (MChemA), awarded by the Royal Society of Chemistry. This is a specialist postgraduate qualification by examination that verifies knowledge and understanding of food and its potential defects, interpretation of food law, and the application and interpretation of chemical analysis for food law enforcement.
The Public Analysts’ laboratories must be third-party accredited to International Standard BS EN ISO/IEC 17025:2017.
In the mid 1980s there were some 40 Public Analyst Laboratories in the UK with over 100 appointed Public Analysts.  By 1993 that had reduced to 34 Laboratories and around 80 Public Analysts, and by 2010 the number of Public Analyst Laboratories had reduced to 22 with only about 26 Public Analysts. As of 2022 there are 15 Public Analyst laboratories remaining in the UK. In part, the reduction in number of laboratories over the decades has been due to rationalisation and benefits from economies of scale; however, by a larger part, it has arisen due to lack of adequate funding. Although some of the remaining laboratories are larger than many that no longer exist, the overall capacity of the system is now far less than it used to be.
Enforcement of food law in the UK is done by local authorities, principally their environmental health officers and trading standards officers.  Whilst these officers are empowered to take samples of food, the actual assessment in terms of chemical analysis or microbiological examination and subsequent interpretation that are necessary to determine whether a food complies with legislation, is carried out by Public Analysts and Food Examiners respectively, scientists whose qualifications and experience are specified by regulations.