HACCP - Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points
HACCP is an acronym that stands for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points. - HACCP is a way of looking at how a food business produces food to determine what could possibly go wrong (hazard analysis) and how the introduction of food safety hazards could be prevented (critical control points).
- HACCP was first developed for the NASA space program back in the 50’s and 60’s and has subsequently been adopted by both the food industry and the regulatory authorities as a very important tool for reducing the risk of food contamination.
HACCP is the application of 7 basic principles:
1. Conduct a hazard analysis
- Look at each manufacturing process to see what chemical physical or biological hazards could occur.
2. Determine the critical control points (CCP)
- Identify those steps in the manufacturing process where a high level of control is essential to prevent the identified hazards getting or remaining in the product.
- Typically these steps will be cooking, cooling and refrigerated storage.
3. Establish critical limits
- Critical limits for example might be the minimum cooking temperature that is necessary to kill bacteria or the maximum temperature or time at which a chilled product can be held before it becomes unsafe.
4. Establish a system to monitor control of the CCP
- If you can’t measure something then you cannot control it.
- If the critical limit for cooking a chicken is a core temperature of 80°C, then you have to check the temperature of the chicken before you finish cooking it to ensure that it has got to that temperature.
5. Establish corrective action to be taken when monitoring indicates that a particular CCP is not under control
- Corrective action is the action you take when you find that a control measure is outside the critical limits
- For example, if the chicken has not reached 80° in its centre, then it will have to be returned to the oven, given additional cooking time and then the temperature re-checked before consuming or putting on display.
6. Establish procedures to verify that the HACCP system is working effectively.
- These procedures are the tests and checks that a food business undertakes to make sure their HACCP system is controlling the hazards that have been identified.
- Typically they will include:
- Microbial testing of finished products
- Shelf life testing
- Microbial testing of food equipment and surfaces after cleaning
- Internal auditing o ensure procedures are being followed
7. Establish documentation covering all procedures and records appropriate to these principles and their application.
- Relevant procedures would include:
- Work instructions and SOPs for all food safety relevant activities
- Cleaning, calibration and pest control manuals and their procedures.
- Specifications for raw materials and finished products
- Relevant records will include those for:
- CCP monitoring and corrective action
- Verification
- Monitoring corrective action and verification of pre-requisite programs
HACCP Plan
After applying the 7 Principles to its food handling operations, a Food business will have developed what is called a “HACCP Plan”. This is a series of documents that outline what food safety hazards are possible in the foods produced and what the food business is going to do to reduce the likelihood of those hazards contaminating its produce.
Though it sounds simple there is a lot of effort required, particularly in identifying hazards. To be effective, the application of HACCP should involve input from all areas within a food business to ensure that all food safety hazards have been identified. It usually also involves a high degree of knowledge on issues such as food microbiology and food chemistry to ensure that the appropriate control measures are put in place.
