What is HACCP?
Hazard analysis and critical control points or HACCP
is a systematic preventive approach to food safety from biological, chemical, and physical hazards in production processes that can cause the finished product to be unsafe, and designs measurements to reduce these risks to a safe level.
There are 7 principals related to the HACCP plan
Principle 1 of HACCP
Conduct a harzard analysis
Principle 2 of HACCP
Determine critical control points, where identified hazards can be prevented, eliminated, or reduced to safe levels
Principle 3 of HACCP
Establish critical limits
Principle 4 of HACCP
Establish monitoring procedures
Principle 5 of HACCP
Identify corrective actions
Principle 6 of HACCP
Verify that the system works
Principle 7 of HACCP
Establish procedures for record keeping and documentation
When a HACCP plan is required?
Smoking food as a method to preserve it, using food additives or adding components such as vinegar, curing food, custom-processing animals, packaging food using ROP methods, treating and packaging juice, sprouting seeds or beans, offering live molluscan shellfish from a display tank.
What is an example of a critical control point?
It is a point, step or procedure at which controls can be applied and a food safety hazard can be prevented, eliminated or reduced to acceptable (critical) levels. The most common CCP is cooking, where food safety managers designate critical limits.
At Westchester Food Safety we go over each principal in depth explain real life situations where the HACCP plan can be implemented.