FOOD SAFETY MANAGEMENT SYSTEM
A food safety management system is a general set of food safety practices and standards
for use in food premises. A food safety management system is important to have because
it controls and minimizes food contamination.
The Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) system is the
most common food safety management system used in food
premises. The goal of the HACCP system is to eliminate or
reduce cases of food-borne illness and prevent food
adulteration.
Before you begin with any food safety management system,
you need to make sure basic food safety practices are being
followed. First make sure:
• Facility and equipment are clean and sanitary
• Facility is safe, including receiving, storage, and transportation
• Food handlers use safe food handling and packaging methods
• Food handlers practice good personal hygiene
When you know how to do these things, you can implement a HACCP system.
The 7 Steps of HACCP
Step 1: Hazard Analysis
• Review recipes and assess their risk for time-temperature abuse and cross-
contamination at every stage of preparation
• Pay special attention to food with potentially hazardous food ingredients
• Break down recipes into delivery, storage, preparation, cooking, portioning, serving
and reheating
• Use a flow chart diagram to show each step, the equipment used, the personnel
involved, the location of the process, and other processes in the same area
Step 2: Identify Critical Control Points (CCPs)
• A Critical Control Point (CCP) is any point during food preparation or production
where a food safety hazard is identified (i.e. Step 1)
• On the flow chart, record the expected time, temperature, and amount of handling
involved in each step according to recipe
• Break down each step and look for the possibility of contamination and growth of
micro-organisms. The most high-risk steps should be looked at most carefully
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Step 3: Critical Limits
• For each Critical Control Point (CCP) identified, a Critical Limit needs to be set.
Critical limits lessen, prevent, or eliminate a hazard. Critical Limits are typically
temperature controls
• Each recipe has a time-temperature CCP
• Example: CCPs and related Critical Limits of chicken parmesan
Critical Control Point Critical Limit
Raw chicken may contain Chicken must be cooked to at least
Salmonella bacteria 74°C (165°F) to kill Salmonella
bacteria
Bacterial growth in Danger Zone 4°C Cool cooked foods from 60°C (140°F)
(40°F) and 60°C (140°F) to 20°C (68°F) within two hours,
and from 20°C (68°F) to 4°C (40°F)
or less within the next four hours.
Handling raw foods contaminates Must wash hands between handling
food handler’s hands. raw foods and ready-to-eat foods
Step 4: Monitor CCPs
• At each Critical Control Point, ensure Critical Limits are achieved
• Critical Limits must be measurable and recordable
• Those responsible must know how often to monitor
• Keep monitoring records
• Examples of monitoring CCPs includes checking:
➢ Temperatures during cooking and in fridges and freezers
➢ For signs of allergen cross-contamination
➢ For signs of infestation and contamination for received food
➢ For government stamps on labels of received meats
Step 5: Corrective action
• Immediate action must be taken when time and/or temperature measurements
show that there is unsafe food practices
• Keep records of any corrective action performed, including responses to any event
of food-borne illness and/or product recall
• In the event of a food-borne illness or product recall, it is the operator’s duty to
inform public health authorities and assist them in their investigation in any way
requested
• Corrective action steps must include:
➢ Correcting the problem
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➢ Identifying product(s) affected by the problem
➢ Dealing with the affected products
➢ Preventing the problem from happening again
Step 6: Verification
• Double check to ensure HACCP system is working and everyone is doing what
they need to be doing
• Modifications to HACCP plan may be required for specific retail operations in order
to minimize risk-factors
• Verification done by someone not involved in monitoring
Step 7: Documentation
✓ Two types of HACCP records:
1) Documentation
• Policies, procedures
2) Records
• Created when HACCP procedures followed
• Include temperature logs, corrective action logs
✓ Review procedures often and record the proper preparation steps and handling
concerns
✓ Records should be simple and easy for employees to use. If record keeping isn't
made easy, staff may put in numbers without actually measuring
Allergen Controls
Retail food service premises, for example restaurants and bakeries, are not required by law to
list ingredients like you see on pre-packaged foods.
Allergen controls using CCPs include:
✓ Making sure food ingredients are clearly communicated
to the customer
✓ Make sure the ingredients on your menus are accurate
✓ Make sure your food isn’t contaminated by other foods
✓ Have an accurate and up-to-date recipe binder
✓ Avoid ingredients known to cause allergic reactions
where you can
✓ Educate serving and kitchen staff on menu items and on
dealing with allergies
✓ If you’re not sure what’s in a product, say so
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PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE PROGRAM
A well-organized preventive maintenance program is an essential part of a food premises’
food safety and quality program. A plan should be in place that ensures all equipment are
kept in good working order and operated according to manufacturer’s specifications. Well-
maintained equipment works properly ensuring a facility runs smoothly, helps ensure the
production of safe foods and provides a means to document performance.
A number of food-borne outbreaks in the past have been directly attributed to failure to
properly maintain equipment under sanitary conditions. One of the most infamous in Canada
was the 2008 Listeria outbreak in Ontario and Quebec associated with retail deli meat which
caused the death of 20 elderly people. In that outbreak, routine cleaning and sanitizing of
machinery used for retail packaging of deli meats was not properly carried out by staff
causing the potentially harmful bacteria Listeria to rapidly colonize the machinery and cross-
contaminate the food being passed through it.
Begin developing a preventive maintenance program by taking inventory of all equipment that
may have an impact on food safety. For each piece of equipment, there may be several levels
of maintenance (routine, lubrication, parts replacement, etc.). When establishing maintenance
schedules, a risk assessment on each piece of equipment should be conducted (i.e. How
important is that operation or activity to product quality, safety or legal compliance?). Based
on the risk assessment, the operation may decide to perform maintenance activities more or
less frequently.
A critical part of any preventive maintenance program includes written procedures that both
describe how to do the work and properly document that the work is being done and done
properly. In the Listeria outbreak above, despite a sanitation plan in place, no one checked
the sanitation was actually being carried out. Written preventive maintenance procedures
should be developed for different types of equipment work and checks (ex. repairs, parts
replacement, spare parts inventory, staff training, lubrication, auditing/quality assurance).
Useful resources for developing these procedures include the manuals provided by the
equipment manufacturers and the risk assessments they have conducted and their own
experiences.
Once written procedures are in place, create a schedule of when these preventative
maintenance procedures are to be performed for all equipment on your list. All maintenance
work including observed deviations from standards and corrective actions should be
documented and kept on file either electronically or as hard copies.
Example components of a preventative maintenance program:
• List of all equipment that require routine calibration (ex. thermometers, pH meters)
• Written calibration procedures – instructs staff on how to perform calibration
• Calibration records – used by staff to document any deviations and corrective action
• Calibration verification procedures – resource for management to confirm calibration
achieved
• Calibration verification records – audit results observed by management
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• Preventive maintenance and calibration training procedures – staff training resource
• Preventive maintenance and calibration training records – confirmation of staff trained
• Hand-over procedures - before resuming equipment operation after shift change, new
staff perform equipment checks to verify earlier required maintenance was done to
ensure equipment quality is maintained at hand-over
Useful resources for creating your own preventive maintenance procedures and records
can be found here at this URL:
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cdn.multiscreensite.com/005cd0f2/files/uploaded/14.%20%20The%20Preventative%20Control%20Plan%20-
%20PCP.pdf
