Food Hygiene - HACCP
The food regulations 2006 require food businesses to ensure that appropriate systems are implemented and are effective. This is based on HACCP principles originally designed by NASA. It is up to the owner of the business to ensure a system is in place. For small catering establishments the Safer Food Better Business pack is ideal and can be ordered free of charge on The Foods Standards Agency site at foodstandards@ecgroup.co.uk or you can download ours here.
Traditionally HACCP is applied to each specific product or food item but is unlikely to be the case in catering. Here they tend to be grouped together based on how they are prepared, assessing each hazard and the controls that need to be implemented.
When a hazard has been identified it is important to decide what control can be put in place to ensure that the actual risk is eliminated or reduced. For example if you were relying on the heating process to kill bacteria in raw foods, then the heating process is the critical point and ensuring that the correct temperature is maintained for the right amount of time would be the control.
Example
Stage |
Hazard |
Control |
Cooking Food |
Incorrect cooking of food |
Ensure sufficient time to cook and core temperatures are reached 70C for minimum 2 minutes. Use a Food probe to confirm. |
Another example is cooling rice, if cooled too slowly at room temperature can cause food poisoning. Cooling the rice within 90 minutes, using a blast chiller, putting it in a container around some iced water before putting it in the fridge, dividing into smaller portions to cool quicker are all control measures that can be used to reduce the risk.
Monitoring, Recording and Reporting
The legal requirements in the food safety regulations require all food businesses:
- Make food safely
- Show what they do to make food safely
- Have this written down
This means that formal records of procedures in place must be kept and updated on a regular basis. Records of cleaning activities and fridge temperatures are some of the records you can keep. The Safer Food Better Business pack allows you to do this.
Remember you must, by law, show a Food Safety System is in place based on HACCP principals.
Finished? Try some sample test questions here. (Answers can be found in the download section)