Food Safety and Security: Discussion 13 - Critical Control Points

The critical control points are to ensure that all the safety hazards are eliminated, prevented or within acceptable limits. A critical control point is a procedure, step or point which can be applied to control the risk. The team must thoroughly go through each step and correctly identify the correct critical control points. It needs to be precise to ensure that the process is effective and correct. It is best to brainstorm and go through a structured method when analyzing hazards. A good step once you have done the process flow diagram and it has been done and verified is to move onto the hazard analysis.

 In the process flow diagram, you determined stages where there could be contamination. Contaminations can be chemical, physical or pathogens. IN the Hazard Analysis Chart, the process step is further detailed. Here, the hazard and source or cause, the likelihood and severity as well as whether or not it is a significant hazard and what the control measures are all outlined. Next, the process should be analyzed with ha variety of quest ions which are outlined on 6.5.2 in the text, but are not exhaustive. They walk you through the process, helping to further identify issues. When detailing, the information should include as many specific names as possible in regard to pathogens and how they develop and either become toxic, create toxins or infect.

Control points are important by ensuring the pathogen does not get introduced to the consumer. This means that there are control points before you even get to the critical control point. This is to create a web to ensure safety. CCP decision trees are used to ensure that the process is consistently identified and organized to ensure that each step can be directly handled. As a producer for my example, goat milk, since it is a raw product before it is processed, it will likely require a “certificate of analysis” when being distributed to restaurants, caterers or more to prove it does not contain pathogens. This is to ensure the safety to the consumer and to let the person receiving your product know it has been tested to be free of contamination.

What the significant hazards are and how you will address it are important or critical control points. Addressing cross contamination issues is also vital to address. Addressing the appropriate questions and how they can be answered are important. Such as whether or not you can eliminate certain issues, or if there are acceptable forms of contamination or not. A food safety program should be outlined that should progress the entire time the product is being managed by the company and information on preservation or correct storage provided to the consumer. The type of critical limits are important to outline. This may include microbiological limits. The critical limits should then be valdated to prove the critical control points are being effective.  If they do not pass the validation they should be changed to accommodate. There should be testing to ensure safety.