Food Safety and Quality Assurance

HACCP Compliance

Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) is a management system intended to keep food from becoming compromised by physical, chemical, or biological contaminants. It is an important part of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) rules, which aim to prevent food safety problems that cause foodborne illness.

Widely used in the food industry, HACCP is essentially a proactive food safety standards system. When properly managed, it works powerfully to prevent, eliminate, or reduce the kinds of operational issues that can lead to contamination and food waste.

There are seven distinct HACCP principles that are a must to include in any food safety program:

1. Conduct a hazard analysis – Assemble a list of potential hazards to your products.
2. Identify the critical control points (CCPs) – A CCP is a step, point, or procedure that can be controlled in a way to prevent a food safety hazard.
3. Establish critical limits for each CCP – Determine parameters for each control point (e.g., acceptable level of a certain chemical).
4. Establish monitoring requirements for each CCP – Determine specific monitoring processes to assure the proper functioning of every CCP.
5. Establish corrective actions – Determine in advance what is to be done if a critical limit is exceeded.
6. Establish record-keeping procedures – Document and preserve all temperature monitoring and other relevant data.
7. Establish verification procedures – The HACCP plan must be carefully and periodically assessed to ensure its efficiency and effectiveness.

However, as descriptive and thorough as the HACCP system and your own food safety programs may be, it can still be difficult to manage food safety compliance. Manual checks can result in pencil-whipping, which can render your other safety protocols ineffective.

When it comes to carrying out an HACCP plan and your own internal audits, you need reliable quality assurance tools that allow you to automate temperature checks and other food safety processes and maintain compliance with proof.

When you’re looking for powerful FSQA software, the ComplianceMate system employs IoT devices like wireless temperature monitors to allow for continuous temperature monitoring and temperature reporting along with automated workflow processes to ensure completion of tasks and confirmed compliance.