HACCP is basically health and safety for meals so it doesn’t make you sick or even kill you thru meals poisoning, poor hygiene, sanitation or contamination. HACCP was devised by NASA (that is right.. NASA) and Pilsbury Corporation (USA’s largest food manufacturer in the 60’s) in the build as much as the space race between the USA and the us within the 50’s – 60’s. It was originally designed to ensure that the food the astronauts took into space was not contaminated with food poisoning micro organism, harmful chemicals or every other physical agent which might be dangerous to somebody who eats it.
HACCP is now a authorized requirement in all EU nations, the USA and plenty of different nations worldwide. It is pushed by the World Health Organisation and the World Trade Organisation into nations legislation. Basically if you’re a meals business and wish to export food to other international locations you want a HACCP system in place. It is enforced by Environmental Health Officers within the UK and Health Inspectors elsewhere.
It is really quite simple; in order to have a HACCP Plan that you must:
1. Have a HACCP Team (type of just like the Health and Safety Staff) who will draw up the documentation.
2. The HACCP Crew then draws up a Process Move Diagram of the meals preparation or manufacturing process. E.g. Items Inwards, Chilled Storage, Preparation, Packing, Finished Goods Storage, Temperature Managed Delivery.
3. You then take each of these process steps and attempt to identify things that might go improper (i.e. hazards). For instance, in the Chilled Storage step talked about above, the fridge might break down and the temperature of the meals could improve and micro organism present can them multiply. This would be described as a hazard “Bacterial growth (temperature not low sufficient)”.
4. Then we describe the control measure for the hazard. Within the above instance, the management measure could be “Successfully operating refrigerator.”
5. What we do next is decide if the hazard is vital to food safety or not, i.e. is it a Crucial Management Point (CCP). There are a number of ways to do this however basically all of it boils down to this fact. We have to ask ourselves ‘If the control measure (in this case “Successfully Working Chilled Storage”) have been to NOT WORK, would someone get sick or die because of it?’ – If we answer sure to that question then this is a Vital Management Point. That means we must set up Critical Limits, a Monitoring Procedure and a Corrective Action. In our Chilled Storage instance the answer to this query is often yes and due to this fact anything that involves refrigerated storage is usually a Vital Control Point.
6. Having recognized a CCP we need to put some numbers on the hazard to determine what the ‘known and safe’ ranges or Vital Limits could be for that hazard. In our example, we know that food is safe (i.e. micro organism do not grow very fast) at 5oC so our Critical Limits are 1-5oC or <5oC.
7. So now we all know what to measure we want a Monitoring Procedure that outlines how to measure the essential restrict, how often to do it who is to do the measuring.
8. We want a Corrective Action so that now we have a plan in place within the event that the Monitoring Procedure finds a Important Limit outside the settle forable range, i.e. >5oc in this example’s case.
So there you have it, phew!! It’s so much to soak up and that is why loads of meals businesses battle with it however HACCP is a logical approach to ensuring food safety; it is international, comprehensive and a legal requirement in many countries.
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