The HACCP-Concept

HACCP – The global standard for consumer-safety

18.05.2017

The development of HACCP

The Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point-concept was developed in 1959, when the American “National Aeronautics and Space Administration” (NASA) was looking for a supplier to provide 100 % safe food products for their astronauts in space. To meet this goal, the food producer “Pillsbury” applied the military “Failure Mode and Effects Analysis” on the food industry – and established a standard-procedure for food safety, which is used worldwide today.

In 1993, the United Nations included the HACCP in their “Codex Alimentarius”, the internationally valid collection of standards for food safety. In the USA, the concept was prescribed by law even earlier (since 1985), the European Union followed in 2004 by determining a new “Hygiene package” which bans all products processed without HACCP-plan on European territory.

Principles of HACCP

The HACCP is a tool to help processors ensuring the safety of their food products. Therefore, the process steps during the food manufacturing that can lead to a contamination of the products with physical, biological or chemical impurities need to be detected. After that, those critical steps can be monitored and preventive actions to avoid or minimize the risks can be taken.

To be effective, the HACCP must be prepared specifically for each manufacturing process, following the seven basic steps prescribed by the UN:

1. Execution of a Hazard-Analysis

The Hazard-Analysis enables to determine dangers for the food safety and develop preventive measures to control them.

2. Identification of Critical Control Points

A Critical Control Point (CCP) is a process step, where a detection of contaminants in the product is possible and actions to avoid or decrease the risks can be implemented.

3. Determination of limit values for each CCP

It is important to determine maximum or minimum values for each CCP, which the hazards must not exceed or undercut.

4. Introduction of CCP monitoring procedures

Monitoring activities are necessary to ensure, that all CCPs are within their limit values at all time. If this is not the case, the system has to initiate an alarm.

5. Determination of corrective actions

If the monitoring indicates a deviation from the limit value at a CCP, corrective actions to restore the safe conditions need to be initiated. These actions ensure that the products can not pose any risk for the consumer.

6. Introduction of procedures to ensure the HACCPs error-free operation

A verification of the HACCP plan ensures that the system is working as intended at all time and guarantees a contamination-free and safe final product. This procedure includes actions like a review of the CCPs, their critical limits and an analysis of microbial samples.

7. Establish record keeping procedures

All steps of the HACCP process - like the Hazard analysis, the written HACCP plan, records of the CCP monitoring, etc. - must be documented and stored.

HACCP – Der globale Standard des Verbraucherschutzes

FESSMANN Hygiene-Floor: Prevention of dirt accumulations

By using the right machinery, you can save a tremendous amount of efforts and costs in the monitoring of your HACCP plan. Especially modern plants are designed to support the processor in as many points as possible.

Due to their high hygiene standards, in particular Semi-continuously and continuously plants by FESSMANN provide many advantages in this case. For example, the lower staff requirements are decisive here: Less contact with the operators prevents any human contamination of the products.

Additionally, the monitoring software FOOD.LOG enables the recording of all reached chamber- and core-temperatures during the whole process. Due to this, the highest possible safety by eliminating biological contaminations is ensured and documented – making the product's thermal treatment an ideal Critical Control Point of the HACCP plan.

FESSMANN Hygiene-Floor: Prevention of dirt accumulations

The FESSMANN plants increase the production’s hygiene standards even after the end of the heating processes: By cooling the goods until packaging-ready temperatures in the same plant where the heating processes were executed, the product-safety of further process steps can be increased immensely! The packaging can take place immediately after leaving the plant, what reduces the high-risk zone after the thermal treatment to a minimum – cross-contaminations due to the transport trough the production hall and long cooling times in storage rooms can be avoided.