The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requires any food manufacturing plant of juice (FDA 21 CFR part 120) and seafood (FDA 21 CFR part 123) products to create a HACCP plan.
Similarly, the United States Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA FSIS) requires mandatory HACCP programs for any meat products and poultry food businesses.
There are seven steps of HACCP:
*Perform a hazard analysis
*Determine Critical Control Points (CCPs)
*Set critical limits
*Establish a monitoring system
*Establish corrective actions
*Establish verification procedures
*Establish record-keeping procedures
HACCP programs should be strictly related to food safety. The production of safe food products requires that the HACCP system be built upon a solid foundation of prerequisite programs.
Critical Control Points should only be used to control those points in a process where lack of control will likely result in the development of a potential safety hazard. They should not be used to control nonhazardous situations which are of serious regulatory, consumer or economic consequence.
Too much monitoring (i.e., inclusion of non-hazardous points) will dilutes out the HACCP effort, resulting in nothing being monitored or the wrong points being monitored. Non-safety related monitoring procedures should be part of a standard quality assurance programs.
HACCP was first developed and used by the Pillsbury Company in the late 1950’s to provide safe food for America’s space program.
Federal and state regulatory agencies have adopted the HACCP approach. Beginning in January of 1998, all seafood processors who ship their product across state lines will be required to have HACCP plans in place.
HACCP Program
