How do you trace your product?

This week we cover good form design, how you trace your products, checking out your drains and my guest presentation at an upcoming conference.

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Welcome

Well, I think we are up to about episode 19 of HACCP Mentor Review and nearly at the end of May already! This week we cover good form design, how you trace your products, checking out your drains and my guest presentation at an upcoming conference. Letā€™s get into it.

Monitoring Form Design

This episode, I want to go back to one of the basics ā€“ monitoring form design. You may or may not think this is important but design can mean the difference in food handlers completing the requirement information and not. When you look at your monitoring forms check that they are not cluttered (as in you are not trying to capture an excessive amount of information) and there is sufficient space to record information without having to resort to writing in a size equivalent to a font size 4.

Make sure that space is allocated to capture date, time or record completion in addition to the name and/or signature of the person completing the record and reviewing the activity. I also suggest you move away from so called ā€œtick and flickā€ form completion as these types of records can undermine record authenticity. Get food handlers to actually write an answer.

Food Safety Live 2013

This episode I am very happy to announce inclusion as a guest speaker at the upcoming Food Safety Live 2013 conference. The online conference which will be held on June 26, consists of 14 hours of back to back presentations on the industries hottest trends from leading industry experts. Registration is free but limited to 1000 places only. You can check out more information, see what I will be talking about and register at foodsafetylive.com

How do you trace your product?

Product traceability plays an important part in your food safety program and you are required to have systems in place to be able to undertake this activity. As a general rule you should be able to trace one up and one down. What this means is, you can trace where your product has gone to or one-up and where your raw materials have come from ā€“ one-down.

Having the exact steps documented will allow you to quickly trace products to both customers and back to raw material suppliers. I suggest including what records you would need to access to show traceability from start to finish.

Action of the Week

This weekā€™s action item is to check that drains are clean. This means getting down on your hands and knees and having a good look at production floor drains. Lift off drain covers, remove drain grates so you can do a better visual inspection.

Food Poisoning outbreak

This episodes food poisoning outbreak comes from the capital my home country of Australia ā€“ Canberra.

ACT Health is currently investigating an outbreak of Salmonella gastroenteritis linked to a local restaurant. Over 140 suspected cases of gastrointestinal illness have been reported among persons who ate at the restaurant with thirty of these having had Salmonella confirmed by laboratory testing. It has also been reported that 15 people have been hospitalised.

The Copa Brazilian restaurant has been linked to the outbreak and has recently made a public apology to patrons affected. Mayonnaise, made using raw eggs has been implicated as the most probable cause of the outbreak.

Wrap Up

That wraps up this weeks episode. If there is anything that you would like covered in upcoming episodes please leave a comment below this HACCP Mentor Review or just send me an email. Until next time, have a great week. Iā€™m Amanda Evans from www.haccpmentor.com.

 

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