What is HACCP?
What is HACCP?
HACCP stands for Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP).
HACCP is an internationally recognized method of identifying and managing food safety related risk and, when central to an active food safety program, can provide your customers, the public, and regulatory agencies assurance that a food safety program is well managed.
HACCP is a management system in which food safety is addressed through the analysis and control of biological, chemical, and physical hazards from raw material production, procurement and handling, to manufacturing, distribution and consumption of the finished product.
Today, many of the world’s best manufacturers and vendors use the system as a basis for their food safety management programs and for compliance with GFSI audit schemes.
Through analysis of hazards and where they can occur, Safe Food Alliance of California helps implement systems and procedures to minimize risk. Safe Food Alliance provides a truly hands-on food safety management system at each and every operation in assisting in the management of critical control points.
A food safety program, however, does not just stop with HACCP. To be effective, prerequisite programs such as pest control, traceability & recall, hygiene and sanitation need to be developed and implemented. Additionally, the issue of ensuring that suppliers and distributors also have a food safety program needs to be addressed through development of ingredient specifications and a vendor assurance system.
Why is HACCP Important?
Proper implementation of a HACCP program helps reduce the likelihood of customer complaints or a recall by identifying and controlling potential hazards which may come from raw materials, facility processes, and human error. The greater employee awareness that results from a HACCP program helps to drive continual improvement of a company’s products and processes.
Additionally, the HACCP principles are in alignment with the requirements of the FDA’s Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) rule for food processors — Hazard Analysis and Risk-based Preventive Controls (“HARPC” or “Preventive Controls”). Although a HACCP plan does not meet all of the requirements, it meets the majority of the requirements and is the best platform from which to build a FSMA-compliant management system.
The Seven Principles of HACCP
Principle 1: Conduct a hazard analysis and identify control measures.
Principle 2: Determine the critical control points (CCPs).
Principle 3: Establish validated critical limits.
Principle 4: Establish a system to monitor control of CCPs.
Principle 5: Establish the corrective actions to be taken when monitoring indicates a deviation from a critical limit at a CCP has occurred.
Principle 6: Validate the HACCP plan and then establish procedures for verification to confirm that the HACCP system is working as intended.
Principle 7: Establish documentation concerning all procedures and records appropriate to these principles and their application.
Implementing HACCP
Step 1: Assemble the HACCP Team
As with any successful food safety program, assemble a HACCP team which is multidisciplinary. This means including team members from departments such as operations, maintenance, production, and quality. With a multidisciplinary team, you can holistically develop your company’s HACC plan.
Once assembled, the HACCP team is responsible for identifying the scope of your food safety system and determining which prerequisite programs your company needs to create.
Step 2: Describe Your Product
A HACCP plan requires a detailed product description for each product you produce in your facility. If you produce multiple products, it may be a good idea to group them based on characteristics or production steps. When writing your descriptions, include details on anything safety related including:
- Ingredients
- Physical and chemical characteristics such as water activity, pH, allergens, and preservatives
- Processing steps like heat-treatment, freezing, drying, smoking, and brining
- Packaging
- Shelf-life and storage conditions
- Methods of distribution
Step 3: Identify Your Product’s Intended Use
In Step 3, we determine both what the intended use is and the intended users of your product. Explain how the product is meant to be used. Is it meant to be eaten as is or “Ready to Eat”? Is it meant to be an ingredient for a product down the line? Be as specific as possible! Also consider the unintended use. For example, cookie dough is meant to be cooked before eating, but many people eat cookie dough raw. In this case the unintended use is the consumer eating raw cookie dough, therefore your HACCP plan needs to account for it.
When listing your intended users, keep in mind vulnerable populations such as children, pregnant people, and the elderly. They can be more susceptible to food borne illness than the average person, and your food safety plan should be developed with that in mind.
Step 4: Construct a Flow Diagram
This is the step that really trips people up. While you can create a flow diagram to represent multiple products based on similar processes, remember that you need a flow diagram for every product. When you create your flow diagram, it needs to include any step in the production process, including:
- The sequence and interaction of the steps in the operation
- The point at which raw materials, ingredients, processing aids, packaging materials, and utilities enter the process.
- Outsourced processes
- Reworking and recycling
- Where end products, intermediate products, waste, and by-products are released or removed.
Based on how complex your process is, you can connect multiple flow charts to one another. These flow diagrams will be used in your hazard analysis, a pivotal piece in your HACCP plan.
Step 5: On-site Confirmation of Flow Diagram
Once you have created your flow diagram, conduct an on-site confirmation with a member of the production team. It’s a good idea to do this step multiple times in the day to double check that nothing has been missed based on which shift is running.
Step 6: Conduct a Hazard Analysis
Conducting a hazard analysis is also known as Principle 1 of the HACCP plan. To do the analysis you will list all the potential hazards in your food safety process and then determine which ones pose a significant risk to the safety of your product.
In the analysis, you will evaluate where the hazard is likely to occur, identify the type of hazard, and document them appropriately. This process will help you pinpoint which hazards require prevention, elimination, or reduction for your product to be safe to eat.
Step 7: Determine Your CCPs
Hazard analysis is the tool used to identify critical control points (CCPs), also known as the second principle of a HACCP plan. The hazards that are listed as CCPs are significant ones. Where CCPs occur, a control measure is essential to the safety of your final product. Each critical control point will have at least one control measure, but often has more than one. A critical control point can also control more than one hazard at a time.
Step 8: Establish Validated Critical Limits for Each CCP
Critical limits are what we use to know that we are controlling something in the food safety realm. For Principle 3 of the HACCP plan, critical limits are created to measure the effectiveness of a critical control point. For example, in almond production, there is a maximum allowable limit for aflatoxin. If the product is tested and the results come back above the critical limit, that product can’t go out to customers as is.
An important piece to critical limits is that they must be validated which means you can’t just choose whichever limit you think makes sense. To continue our almond example, the almond board has a set maximum limit for aflatoxin which all almond producers must adhere to.
Step 9: Establish a Monitoring System for Each CCP
Once you have determined your CCPs, their control measures, and associated critical limits, it’s time to start monitoring for Principle 4 of the HACCP plan. How often do you need to check the critical limits? Continuously? Once an Hour? Once a day? There will be some limits which have standard monitoring schedules and some which don’t. if is the responsibility of your company’s HACC team to appropriately monitor all identified CCPs. If you have questions about limits and the science behind them, your friendly neighborhood Safe Food Alliance scientist is happy to assist.
Step 10: Establish Corrective Actions
With any system, mistakes happen. Principle 5 of the HACCP plan allows you to effectively prepare for some of these mistakes. Once you have determined your CCPs and the monitoring tactics for each, it’s time to consider how things could go wrong and plan.
There will be instances where your product exceeds a critical limit. By establishing corrective actions for when you do, your entire team will be better prepared. When creating corrective actions, consider how your product will be brought under control, how product will be segregated, any necessary lab analysis, and the root cause.
Step 11: Validate the HACCP Plan and Establish Verification Procedures
Principle 6 of the HACCP plan consists of two parts: validation and verification. Validation is the technical aspect of controlling hazards such as reviewing scientific literature, using mathematical models, and conducting validation studies for the validation of control measures and critical limits. Validation is conducted before the HACCP plan is implemented, while verification is conducted after.
Verification of the HACCP plan is a way to confirm that your food safety system is working correctly. This step is where you verify that your HACCP plan is actually controlling for the hazards you identified in the analysis. Activities include reviewing monitoring and corrective action records, calibrating instruments, environmental testing, and third-party lab testing.
Step 12: Establish Documentation and Record Keeping
Principle 7 of the HACCP plan is all about documentation. You should have every step in the HACCP process documented and if you plan to become certified, it’s mandatory.
Examples of documentation include:
- HACCP team composition
- hazard analysis and the scientific support for the hazards included or excluded
- from the plan
- CCP determination, critical limit determination and the scientific support for the limits set
- Flow Diagrams!
- validation of control measures
- modifications made to the HACCP plan
Examples of records include:
- CCP monitoring activities
- deviations and associated corrective actions
- verification procedures performed
Depending on your company and preferences, documentation and record keeping can be paper or electronic. Choose what works best for your business.
How to Write a HACCP Plan
Basic food safety principles applied in food processing and handling are no longer enough for the modern day customer. Industry standards have far surpassed regulatory requirements. There are several reasons behind the demand of increasing levels of food safety efficacy systems. The most important: ‘consumers’ health is never compromised by consuming adequate food.” When achieving food safety in a product there are only positive outcomes, such as assuring part of business continuity and regulatory compliance, brand protection and customer trust. In order to assure food safety, a methodology that can greatly contribute through documentation, implementation, and maintenance the HACCP Plan (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points).
All elements of HACCP should be set in consecutive flow so that when consulted or reviewed, everything is aligned to the methodology.
To learn more about how to write a HACCP Plan, check out our article “The Contents of a good HACCP Plan”.
