HACCP Process

Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) is a way of managing food safety hazards. It is a recognized way of making sure that food safety hazards in business are managed responsibly day-in, day-out.

To run a food business, a plan is needed based on the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) principles. A HACCP plan keeps your food safe from biological, chemical, and physical food safety hazards.

A HACCP plan involves:

• Looking closely at what you do in your business, what could go wrong, and what risks there are to food safety.
• Identifying critical control points,  that is, areas a business needs to focus on to ensure those risks are removed or reduced to safe levels.
• Deciding what action you need to take if something goes wrong.
• Making sure your procedures are being followed and are working.
• Keeping records to show your procedures are working.

It is important to have food safety management procedures appropriate to your business, to manage and control food hazards. 

A food hazard is something that can make food unsafe to eat. It is important to identify the stages in business when hazards could be present so they can be removed or reduced to safer levels.

There are three main hazards that the HACCP plan controls for:

1. Microbiological - hazard involving harmful bacteria
2. Chemical - hazard involving chemical contamination
3. Physical - hazard involving objects getting into food

How to use this checklist

At the beginning of this checklist, you will be presented with a set of specialized questions given as form fields. You are required to populate each form field with your data.

This checklist has been produced with reference to the Food Standards Scotland,  HACCP Guide.

Using this HACCP Plan Template to manage food safety in your business will help you:

• Plan - What needs to be done and write this down;
• Do - What you planned to do to maintain food safety;
• Check - That you are doing what you planned to do to maintain food safety and write down what was checked and when;
• Act - To correct any food safety problems and write down what has been done about the problem and when.

At the end of each stage, your supervisor/manager will review your work using Process Street's approvals feature. The resulting information is then used to make system improvements. The best way to apply the results will depend on the nature of the system.

Features used in this template include: 

• Stop tasks - To ensure task order.
• Dynamic due dates - To make sure your initiative is reviewed on time.
• Role assignment - To delegate tasks within your team ensuring your supervisors are appropriately assigned to the review tasks.
• Approvals - Tasks can be accepted, rejected, and rejected with comments.

In this HACCP Process checklist, you will be presented with the following form fields for which you are required to populate with your specific data. More information for each form field is provided via linkage to our help pages:

• Subtasks 
• Long text
• Short text 
• Date
• Approvals
• Website form field
• File upload form field
• Role assignment
• Dropdown

Let's start by recording:

• Your details,
• The details of your supervisor or manager,
• Your business details,
• The process to be covered in the plan,
• The names of the people helping to produce the plan,

This is a stop task, meaning you cannot progress in this template until the required form fields are populated.

Your details

Details of Manager/Supervisor

Company details

Checklist details

Once set, the due date for this HACCP Plan Template will be used to set a dynamic due date, notifying your manager for the needed stage approval when required.

Indicate what food preparation process is to be covered by this checklist.

Next, indicate team members helping to produce the plan (the HACCP team). For this, you can use the long-text form field to indicate the name of the team members.

To begin, describe the production process that the plan will cover.

To do this, begin by:

• Detailing the start and endpoints of the process covered;
• The type of food safety hazards to be addressed;
• The product and its intended use;
• The users and customers of the product;
• How the product is to be packaged, stored, and distributed;
• Processing and safety information.

Use the long-text form fields below to detail this information.

It is easier to implement HACCP methology on your business operations if your operations are documented as a process.

Dedicate time to do just this using Process Street. With Process Street you can document any business operation as a checklist just like this one.

For more information on how to do this, watch the below video: Basics of Creating and Editing Templates

Your documented processes need to contain the list of correct process steps in the correct order to continue to the next stage of the HACCP process.

Use the sub-task list below to double-check your documented processes, against the following:

Whilst documenting your processes, it is important to include:

For each process step, complete control point identification.

Refer back to your documented process, and identify the food hazards (biological, chemical, or physical) at each process step.

Use the long-text form field below to detail these hazards.

Take the time to identify and describe the control measures, this includes good hygiene, practices, and operational hygiene procedures.

Use the long-text form field to detail the control measures identified:

Take the time to identify critical control points (CCP) of operations.

These CCPs can be decided internally, externally - set by regulatory bodies and governmental organizations.

Each one of the control points will need at least one legal or critical limit. Identify the legal/critical limit.

In addition to the identified legal/critical limit, corrective action procedures need to be monitored, ensuring that unsafe food is not placed on the market.

A critical limit is a highest or lowest point that is acceptable for product safety. For instance, this could include time, pH, and temperature. 

Critical limits separate acceptability from unacceptability. Use the long-text form field below to detail the critical limits for each control measure.

Critical limits must be at least as strict as any legal limits.

Monitoring is a set of pre-arranged checks, showing whether control measures are in danger of failing and trigger corrective action if needed.

To monitor procedures against each CCP, make sure to decide and record:

1. How monitoring of critical and/or legal limits will be carried
2. When and how often checks will be done
3. Who will monitor (staff should not normally check their work)
4. What and where information will be recorded
5. Who will check that monitoring is being carried out properly and where and how is this check to be recorded

Use the long-text form field below to record this information.

Make sure staff responsible for monitoring and recording results have clear instructions and understand what they must do if there is a problem.

Prompt corrective action is evidence of operator responsibility.

The first stages are decide and record. Run through and record your response to the following questions.

1) What correct actions need to be taken to:

i) Restore control

ii) Deal with the affected product that was produced while the process was out of control

iii) Investigate the cause to avoid a repetition of the problem

1b) Describe who is responsible for carrying out the corrective actions

1c) What information is to be recorded, where, and by whom?

1d) Who will check that corrective action is carried out properly, where, and how will this check be recorded?

Verification means checking or confirming the HACCP-based procedures are achieving the intended effect, i.e. controlling food safety standards.

These checks are carried out:

1. Before a plan is implemented - termed as validation at this point
2. After implementation - termed verification at this point

To validate and verify your HACCP plan, answer the below questions:

1a) What validation and verification checks are to be performed and when?

1b) Who is responsible for carrying them out?

1c) What information is to be recorded, where, and by whom?

1d) Who will check that validation and verification have been carried out properly and where and how will this check be recorded?

Your business's  HACCP-based system, hygiene procedures, checks, and actions need to be written down, to provide evidence for yourself, customers, and official checks.

Assess any documentation to make sure:

HACCP Documents

Examples include the HACCP plan documents and any explanatory notes about the scope, process flow diagram, hazard analysis, control point and critical/’legal’ limit decisions, and the arrangements for monitoring, corrective actions, validation, verification review, and any changes.

†Policy Documents

Examples include the company’s good hygiene policies, procedures, and staff instructions, such as those for completing the monitoring and corrective action records.

Records

Examples include completed checklists or Diary pages showing monitoring results; corrective actions; validation, verification, and review checks. Includes temperature readings, calibration results, microbiological test results, customer complaints, and audit reports.

For daily checks

Set up daily checklists using Process Street that the relevant employee can work through to conduct the list of checks needed every day.

It is recommended that three daily checklists are set up as follows:

A system should be in place so personnel can confirm when the daily checks have been made. A responsible person should be able to confirm that:

For weekly checks

To conduct weekly checks, it is important to look back over the last four weeks and note down:

Changes in products, procedures, legislation, customer complaints or an audit report mean it is important to conduct regular reviews on your HACCP-based system. 

When conducting a review on your HACCP-based system, aspects of your HACCP plan may need to be changed. It is important to understand this, and to be prepared to change:

Record the review results, and amend your HACCP plan if necessary

• Food Standards Agency - Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP)
• Food Standards Scotland - A Short Guide to Completing a HACCP Plan
• Manufacturing Minute - The 12 Steps to Develop a HACCP Plan
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