BMQR Certifications Private Limited

Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point, or HACCP (pronounced hassip), is a food safety program developed nearly 30 years ago for astronauts and it aims at preventing hazards that could cause food-borne illnesses by applying science-based controls, from raw material to finished products.

Traditionally, industry and regulators have depended on spot-checks of manufacturing conditions and random sampling of final products to ensure safe food. This approach, however, tends to be reactive, rather than preventive, and can be less efficient in ensuring food safety and suitability.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has established HACCP for meat and poultry processing plants, as well. Most of these establishments were required to start using HACCP by January 1999.

 Very small plants had until Jan. 25, 2000. (USDA regulates meat and poultry; FDA all other foods.). FDAs across the world, especially in the developed countries, are considering developing regulations that would establish HACCP as the food safety standard throughout various areas of the food industry, like harvesting, raw processing, packaging, distribution, retail service establishments and extending to vending machines, for both domestic and imported food products.

HACCP is based on pre-requisite programs which serve as a foundation for the HACCP plan.

 Some of the pre-requisite programs for a seafood industry would involve the following.

• Cleaning & sanitation
• Personnel hygiene
• Source selection / harvesting and receiving of fish
• Incoming materials (ingredients, additives, packaging and wrapping)
• Listeria management (for specific processes)
• Product recall
• Repair & maintenance
• Transportation & Storage at specified temperatures
• Vermin / pest management
• Potability of water and ice (including clean seawater)
• Waste management (inedible & dropped product)

The HACCP plan is aided by the preliminary steps which include the HACCP team, product description with its intended use, setting food safety objectives for the process and creation and verification of the process flow diagram. Implementation of HACCP would require the commitment from management.

• Analyse hazards: Potential hazards associated with a food and measures to control those hazards are identified. The hazard could be biological  microbial pathogens such as Vibrio sps, Listeria, etc, pathogens ; chemical, such as a heavy metal residues of Mercury & Lead, ; or physical, such as ground glass or metal fragments, shell fragments and bones. The risks are assessed in terms of their severity and probability to identify significant hazards for CCP identification.
• Identify critical control points: These are points in a food item's production--from its raw state through processing and shipping to consumption by the consumer--at which the potential hazard can be controlled or eliminated. Examples are harvesting / sourcing , storage at controlled temperatures, cooking, cooling, packaging and metal detection.
• Establish critical limits for each control point: These are minimum or maximum values which are necessary to ensure food safety and have to be measurable eg . microbial limits for incoming fish / seafood , receiving temperatures, etc.
• Establish procedures to monitor the critical control points: Such procedures are needed to ensure that adherence to the specified critical limits are maintained eg. This might include determining how , how often  and by whom chiller temperatures should be monitored.
• Establish corrective actions to be taken when monitoring shows that a critical limit has not been met: for example, reprocessing or disposing of food if the minimum cooking temperature is not met. This also includes identification of cause of deviation to prevent future recurrences.
• Establish procedures to verify that the system is working properly: The same includes process / product validation for CCP s, ongoing system verification and system reassessment e.g. testing time-and-temperature recording devices to verify that a chilling  unit is working properly.
• Establish effective recordkeeping to document the HACCP system. This would include records of hazards and their control methods, the monitoring of safety requirements and action taken to correct potential problems.

New challenges in food supply have forced FDAs to consider adopting a HACCP-based food safety system on a wider basis. One of the most important challenges is the increasing number of new food pathogens. For example, between 1973 and 1988, bacteria not previously recognized as important causes of food-borne illness--such as Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Salmonella enteritidis--became more widespread.

There also is increasing public health concern about chemical contamination of food: for example, the effects of lead in food on the nervous system.

The USFDA have published its final rule on Seafood HACCP Program. The European Commission also recognizes the benefits of HACCP and has incorporated the HACCP principles into the Food Hygiene Directive and revised directives for the fish, meat, poultry and milk industry.

Hence the development of HACCP will inevitably extend from processing premises into catching and harvesting areas of seafood industry. Considering the increasing awareness of domestic consumers at large, implementation and certification to HACCP will provide a powerful tool in combating health concerns, breaking barriers for foreign trade and improving the competitive edge over major competitors.

• HACCP offers a number of advantages over existing systems in companies. Most importantly, HACCP:

•  focuses on identifying and preventing hazards from contaminating food

• helps to establish ability to detect, control and prevent new and emerging pathogens

• is a system and science based approach to food safety

• places responsibility for ensuring food safety appropriately on the food manufacturer or distributor

• increased consumer confidence and market acceptability. Reduces barriers to international trade - helps food companies compete more effectively in domestic and world markets

• improves companies abilities to launch newer products at a faster pace

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