What Is HACCP?

HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points) is a health and safety methodology for food so it doesn't make you sick or even kill you through food poisoning, poor hygiene, sanitation or contamination.

HACCP (pronounced HASSUP!) was originally devised to ensure that the food the astronauts took into space was not contaminated with food poisoning bacteria, harmful chemicals or any other physical agent which might be dangerous to someone who eats it.

HACCP focuses on identifying things that can go wrong and result in contaminants and poisons getting into the food chain and then controlling those things that can get out of control and make people sick or even cause death.

HACCP is now a legal requirement in all EU countries, the USA and many other countries worldwide. It is heavily promoted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) into countries legislation. It means that all food businesses that want to export to other countries need a HACCP system.

If you are a food business in any of these countries then you need to have implemented HACCP in your business to be able to trade legally. These laws are enforced by Environmental Health Officers in the UK and Health Inspectors elsewhere. It’s really very simple; in order to have a HACCP Plan you need to:

1. Form a HACCP Team (kind of like the Health and Safety Team) who will produce the HACCP Operations Manual.

2. The HACCP Team then produces a Process Flow Diagram of the preparation or manufacturing processes. E.g. Goods Inwards, Chilled Storage, Preparation, Packing, Finished Goods Storage, Temperature Controlled Delivery.

3. Each process steps is then analysed and things that could go wrong (i.e. hazards) are identified aling with the means of control. E.g, in the Chilled Storage step mentioned above, the fridge could break down and the temperature of the food could increase and bacteria present can them multiply. This would be described as a hazard "Bacterial growth (temperature not low enough)".

4. The HACCP Team then ensures the control measure is implemented for the hazard. In the above example, the control measure would be "Effectively operating refrigerator"

5. Following step 4. above we decide if the hazard is critical to food safety or not, i.e. is it a Critical Control Point (CCP). There are a number of ways to do this but basically it all comes down to this fact. We need to ask ourselves 'If the control measure (in this case "Effectively Operating Chilled Storage") were to NOT WORK, would someone get sick or die because of it?' - If we answer yes to that question then this is a Critical Control Point. That means we must establish Critical Limits, a Monitoring Procedure and a Corrective Action. In our Chilled Storage example the answer to this question is often yes and therefore anything that involves refrigerated storage is usually a Critical Control Point.

6. Having identified a CCP we need to to determine what the 'known and safe' levels or Critical Limits would be for that hazard. In our example, we know that food is safe (i.e. bacteria don't grow very fast) at 5oC so our Critical Limits are 1-5oC or <5oC.

7. We now know what to measure we need a Monitoring Procedure that outlines how to measure the critical limit, how often to do this and who is to do the monitoring as well as where it is to be recorded.

8. Finally we establish a Corrective Action so that we have a plan for the event that the Monitoring Procedure finds a Critical Limit outside the acceptable range, i.e. >5oc in this example's case.

So there you have it, phew!! It’s a lot to take in and that’s why a lot of food businesses struggle with it but HACCP is a logical approach to ensuring food safety; it is international, comprehensive and a legal requirement in many countries.

About the Author:
James Flynn is the author of HACCP Now, a popular means of implementing HACCP that has been used in over 1000 food businesses world wide.

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