HACCP Food Safety System

• Food safety is desirable but achieving a zero level of infectious organisms may not be possible.
• New approaches are needed to ensure food safety due to fewer processors producing more products, and foods being held longer and shipped farther.
• Classical approaches relying on microbiological testing have limitations: time constraints, sampling issues, media limitations, and difficulty in proving absence.
• Rapid methods have helped but have not eliminated the need for newer approaches.
• The Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) system is the preferred method for ensuring food safety from farm to fork.
• Microbiological testing and specifications are part of the HACCP system.

What is HACCP?

• HACCP is a systematic approach to identifying and controlling hazards to ensure safe food preparation.
• It involves identifying potential problems, preventing them, and implementing corrective procedures.
• NASA and the US Army Research Laboratories developed HACCP; details published in 1974.
• Since 1998, businesses legally require a food safety system based on HACCP principles.
• Managers have a legal obligation to understand the "European Communities Hygiene of Foodstuffs Regulations."
• The HACCP system emphasizes the quality of ingredients and process steps. If these are controlled, safe food results.
• The system controls microorganisms during production and preparation.

Benefits of HACCP to Food Producers

• Provides data on the safety of intermediate and finished products
• Allows manufacturers to modify processes to enhance safety
• Increases customer confidence and reduces complaints
• Maintains consistent high-quality standards
• Provides a due diligence defense in court

What is a Hazard?

• Any biological, chemical, or physical property that may cause unacceptable consumer health risks.
• Biological hazards include pathogenic bacteria, parasites, naturally occurring toxins, viruses.
• Chemical hazards include detergents, medicine residues, pesticides, heavy metals, oils.
• Physical hazards include glass, metal, stones, wood, plastic, dust, hair, and bones.

What is a Critical Control Point?

• CCP is any point or procedure in a food system where control can minimize or prevent a hazard.
• Examples: cooking time/temperature, freezing time, pH maintenance, employee hygiene.
• CCP1 ensures hazard control (e.g., baking food).
• CCP2 minimizes a hazard (e.g., visual inspection of raw materials).

7 Principles of HACCP

• Identify the hazards at each step from growing to consumption. Prepare a flow diagram to aid in hazard identification.

Determine the CCP(s)

• Identify the points in the operation that ensure control of the hazards.
• Cooking beef burgers to 70°C for 2 minutes kills E. coli O157:H7 and other pathogens

Establish Critical Limit(s)

• Critical limits are tolerances that must be met to ensure that a CCP effectively controls a health hazard.
• Critical limits allow the producer to know when a CCP is out of control.
• The temperature at the center of a beef burger must reach a minimum of 70°C for 2 minutes.

Establish procedures to monitor CCPs

• Monitor and record what is happening at each CCP.
• Monitoring typically involves measuring parameters such as temperature, time, pH, and water activity, and may involve installing a chart recorder.

Establish corrective action to be taken when a deviation occurs

• The action taken must eliminate the hazard created by the deviation.
• If a fridge's temperature is out of specification for more than 10 minutes, actions may include disposal of food and refrigerator repair.

Establish procedures for verification that HACCP system is working correctly

• Verification consists of methods, procedures, and tests used to determine that the system complies with the plan.
• Use microbiological tests and self-inspection schedules, review procedures and plans, review deviations, and perform random sample collection and analysis.

Establish effective record keeping to document the HACCP plan

• The HACCP plan must be on file at the food establishment and available to inspectors.
• Documents and records (e.g., cooking records, delivery or cleaning records) must be kept and readily available as evidence of compliance.

Summary

• HACCP is a management system ensuring the production of safe food through hazard identification, preventative measures, and corrective procedures.
• There are 7 principles of HACCP
• Development of a HACCP plan and process flow diagrams plus some limitations of HACCP

Development of a HACCP Plan

• The first step in developing a HACCP plan is constructing a flow diagram for the entire process, from raw materials to final distribution.
• The diagram should be specific to the production facility and updated as steps change.
• All individuals involved in the process should participate in constructing the process flow diagram.
• The diagram is used to help identify hazards and critical control points.

Development of a HACCP Plan

• The manufacturer must be familiar with the product.
• A hazard analysis of the ingredients to be used must be performed

Development of a HACCP Plan

• Critical control points must be identified.
• Establish microbiological limits for finished products

Some limitations of HACCP

• HACCP requires the education of non-professional food handlers; failure to understand HACCP could lead to its failure.
• The concept must be accepted by food processors, food inspectors, and the public.
• There is ambiguity regarding the identification of some CCPs.

Some limitations of HACCP

• Adopting HACCP may give consumers false assurance that a product is safe regardless of abuse post-purchase.
• Most food poisoning outbreaks result from food handling errors in the home, over which processors have little control.

Microbiological criteria

• Mandatory criterion: Microbiological standard that normally applies to pathogens of public health interests
• Advisory criterion: Microbiological end-product specification or a guideline applied to monitor hygiene

Summary

• Constructing a process flow diagram helps identify hazards in a food process.
• Personnel from different departments should be involved in construction and identification.
• There are several limitations to HACCP.