HACCP Doesn’t Have to Be All or Nothing: Even Incremental Changes Can Have a Big Impact on your Food Safety Program
Most foodservice operators hear Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point, otherwise known as “HACCP,” and picture binders full of flowcharts, scientific analyses, and regulatory paperwork. And while a full, formal plan can start to look exactly like that, the truth is that you don’t have to implement the entire system to benefit from HACCP principles. Even adopting pieces of the framework will reduce your risk of a foodborne illness outbreak.
Our colleagues who manage school foodservice operations are already well-versed in HACCP systems. School foodservice authorities participating in the National School Lunch or National School Breakfast program had to implement HACCP systems over 20 years ago. For those who don’t quite recall the fundamentals of HACCP, it is a systematic, science-based approach to identifying where biological, chemical, and physical hazards can impact your foodservice operation. Then, putting controls in place to prevent, eliminate, or reduce those hazards to safe levels. It was originally developed for NASA’s space food program and has since become the global gold standard for food safety.
The system is built around seven core principles: conducting a hazard analysis, identifying critical control points (CCPs), establishing critical limits, setting up monitoring procedures, defining corrective actions, implementing verification, and maintaining documentation.
…Perfect is the enemy of good in food safety…
If you’re running a restaurant, a catering company, a senior living dining program, or any other foodservice operation without a formal HACCP plan, you can still harness the power of this system right now. Here are a few ideas to get started:
Perfect is the enemy of good in food safety. A foodservice operation that monitors temperatures religiously, trains staff on handwashing and cross-contamination, and documents corrective actions is dramatically safer than one waiting to implement a “perfect” HACCP plan someday. Start with your highest-risk foods, build simple monitoring habits, and document what you do. Risk Nothing.
READ MORE POSTS
Routes of Foodborne Illness & Germs
From your sniffling coworker to the raw chicken on your kitchen cutting board, everyday life is full of potential infectious hazards. With germs so common and seemingly everywhere, knowing how germs spread is vital to preventing infection and foodborne illness. There are seven possible ways for the transmission of bacteria and viruses to take place. Although some of these microorganisms in our environment are good for us and protect us, disease causing pathogens are the germs or bad guys.
Handling Leafy Green Salad
We have had several produce outbreaks of foodborne disease from our lettuce, spinach, and other greens in the last several years that have been devastating to the produce growers and distributors, retail grocery stores, restaurants, and consumers.
Food Packaging Safety in a Vacuum
Extending the shelf life of fresh foods has come a long way in the food industry since curing meats with salt and sugar or canning vegetables with heat processing. The food service and consumer markets needed some better visual packages to draw the eye to the freshness factor and the technology of food packaging has filled our dinner plate. Vacuum packaging and modified atmosphere packaging, shortened to “MAP”, are the terms used for the method of food packaging used every time we choose convenience over more complex scratch meal preparation. According to industry statistics, billions of packages of vacuum and MAP-packaged foods flood the marketplace today. In both modified-atmosphere and vacuum packaging, food is packaged in a pouch made of barrier film.
The Eleven Commandments of Food Safety at Your Restaurant
Lists help us remember all kinds of information. Given the list of recent national foodborne outbreaks in the news, keep repeating this list to your food service team. They are kind of like “commandments”. As a professional in a food service facility we should think of the very basic food safety concepts that every crew member should aspire to learn, even though this list may have different priorities based on your menu. The first 3 apply to anyone who serves food, from a bag of popcorn to a full course meal. As chefs or managers, if we can “set the example” by repeating good food safety practices visibly to the crew, it will help them understand how important it is to the success of your facility. Thou shalt:
