HACCP
Guidance Notes
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592 K |
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Your responsibilities
Regulation EC(No) 852/2004, requires you to identify potential food hazards, decide which of these hazards need to be controlled to ensure food safety, and put into place effective control and monitoring procedures to prevent the hazards causing harm to consumers. Write down what monitoring you carry out. Review the HACCP system periodically.
It is the responsibility of the proprietor of the business to develop the HACCP system. Other staff in the business should be involved, particularly as all staff will be involved in making sure that the food is safe.
Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP)
One system that food businesses, large and small, have used to ensure that food is safe is known as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) and can be carried out in a series of logical steps:
DECIDE WHO WILL DEVELOP THE HACCP SYSTEM |
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DRAW A FLOW CHART OF WHAT YOU DO |
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IDENTIFY WHEN FOOD SAFETY HAZARDS CAN OCCUR |
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DECIDE WHICH STEPS ARE CRITICAL POINTS AND WHICH ARE GOOD PRACTICE |
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SET STANDARDS (CRITICAL LIMITS) FOR THE CONTROLS |
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DECIDE WHO WILL DEVELOP THE HACCP SYSTEM |
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IDENTIFY MONITORING PROCEDURES (CHECKS) FOR CRITICAL POINTS |
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IDENTIFY CORRECTIVE ACTION WHEN MONITORING SHOWS THAT THE CONTROLS ARE NOT WORKING |
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IMPLEMENT THE HACCP SYSTEM AND ENSURE THAT IT IS WORKING EFFECTIVELY |
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REVIEW THE HACCP SYSTEM |
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KEEP DOCUMENTATION AND RECORDS |
Looking at how you work and the practices you have in place will help you to identify what can go wrong and what could cause potential harm to your customer. By knowing what could go wrong you can put into place effective measures to avoid these problems. Checking that what should be done is actually being done in practice and keeping records of this is good practice and will support a defence of due diligence should you ever need one.
