Post No 19. What are the Principles of HACCP?

The Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) tool is a systematic approach to the identification and assessment of food safety hazards associated with all stages of a food operation or food supply chain.

The HACCP approach defines how the food safety hazards should be identified, controlled and how to identify control points and critical control points (CCP), where control needs to be implemented to eliminate or reduce the food safety hazard to an acceptable level. 

Applying the principles of HACCP means the management team in the food business can assess the food safety hazards most likely to affect a product, how these could be caused and how they need to be controlled. The basis of HACCP is to follow the seven principles: 

1.  Conduct a hazard analysis and identify control measures. 
2.  Determine critical control points (CCP) 
3. Establish validated critical limits, (which must be met to ensure CCP is under control). 
4. Establish a system to monitor control of CCPs 
5. Establish the corrective actions to be taken when monitoring indicates a deviation from a critical limit at a CCP has occurred. 
6. Validate the HACCP plan and then establish procedures for verification to confirm that the HACCP system is working as intended. 
7. Establish documentation concerning all procedures and records appropriate to these principles and their application. [1]

Further reading:

[1] Codex standard