HACCP and Quality Feeding Programs

HACCP stands for Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points. This program was initially designed in the United States by the Pillsbury Company in the 1960’s to control food safety in the NASA program for space astronauts. The principle of HACCP programs is to identify key areas to prevent known sources of chemical, biological and physical contamination in the final food product. HACCP based programs have seven principle steps of management:

Hazard Analysis:
Identification of potential hazards/risks (chemical, biological and physical).

Identification of Critical Control Points:
Determine what points in the process are critical and need to be controlled.

Establish a Critical Limit:
Determine a critical limit for safe processing.

Monitoring:
Implement monitoring procedures to keep within critical limits.

Corrective Action:
Identify actions to take when problems occur.

Verification:
Install a record keeping system for the process identified.

Record Keeping:
Determine how to verify if procedures have worked.