How to document your food safety hazards

Try out these helpful HACCP food safety compliance tips.

This Episode:

00:00 – What’s in this episode
00:26 – Preparing for an onsite CAR close-out
01:07 – Food Safety Hazards Identification
02:24 – Food Recall Wrap-up
02:51 – Rotating Sanitisers
03:32 – Food Poisoning Outbreak
04.00 – Action of the Week – Hand Wash stations
04:26 – Food Safety Fail from KFC
04:56 – Share this Video

 

Welcome

Welcome to HACCP Mentor Review – I am Amanda Evans and this episode we discuss:

  • Preparing for an onsite CAR close-out
  • Rotating Sanitisers
  • Hazard Identification
  • Hand Wash stations, along with the top food safety fail, food recall and food poisoning outbreak.

Lets kick the review off with preparing for an onsite CAR close-out.

Preparing for an onsite CAR close-out

I don’t know what is going on out there but I seem to have had a run on onsite CAR close-outs. This is generally because the business has failed their audit or obtained a grade that requires an on-site CAR close out. You can save your business a lot of time and money by being prepared for the re-visit. Make sure you have all of your evidence in order and that it is accessible during the audit.

If you don’t think you are going to have the CAR sorted by the audit date, keep in mind that you can request an extension from your certification body. I can’t say they will always be granted, but it is worth a try.

Food Safety Hazards identification

Whenever you do your hazard analysis you need to assess specific food safety hazards not groups of hazards. This is something that I pick up all the time as an auditor. It is not sufficient to just write “biological” or “bacteria” or “Pathogens”. The same goes for physical hazards.  How to document food safety hazards

You need to identify the individual hazard eg. Salmonella, Listeria, glass, wood, hair, pesticides, cleaning chemicals. The reason being that there is going to be different control measures for each of the hazards.

For example, you would not control listeria the same way as you would control say bacillus and you would not control glass the same way as you would control say hair.

Access training on how to identify CCPs

The other thing to be mindful of is not to assess the hazards as a group (See example above). You likelihood and consequences, again, will be very different. The hazard analysis is the biggest part of your HACCP program and should be treated as such.

It is the time to truly identify everything that can go wrong with your product. By doing this, you can have some level of confidence that you have covered all of your potential risks to protect the business and your customers.

Food Recall Wrap Up

There have been several recalls this week due to possible listeria monocytogenes contamination. Product affected include Cold Smoked Products and Smoked Salmon.

There have also been over 10 recalls from around the world regarding undeclared allergens. You can see more details on these food recalls at www.foodproductrecalls.com.

Rotating Sanitisers

The rotation of sanitisers is especially important if you produce ready-to-eat (RTE) products and will help in ensuring that RTE products do not become cross contaminated. It also will provide a greater effectiveness against bacteria. You can rotate santisers in a number of ways including using one for a certain time period and then switching to another differ one. You can also use different sanitisers for different applications for example, one on equipment and a different one in say boot washing stations. Talk to you chemical supplier for more information.

Food poisoning Outbreak

This week the Public Health Agency in Canada have reported that they are investigating the onset of multiple E. coli O157:H7 illnesses. They state that the most probable source is from shredded lettuce distributed by FreshPoint Inc who have in-turn supplied the raw material to some KFC and KFC-Taco Bell restaurants. The total number of cases to date sits at twenty-six (26). (as of 11 January 2013)

 

Action Item of the week

I know this one is pretty basic, put take the time this week to go around your production site and check that all wash hand basins have an adequate supply of warm running water, soap, disposable paper towel and advisory signage. Don’t forget to include disable toilet facilities and those wash hand basins located in staff change areas.

Food Safety Fail

My “food safety fail” goes to KFC who managed to get some unwarranted media attention for two (2) separate food safety incidences in the past week.

The first one saw a 19 year old man from Essex in the UK report finding what appeared to be a brain-like organ in his chicken.  The second incidence comes from China where the company failed to inform Chinese authorities about tests showing high levels of antibiotics in their chicken.

Share this video

That wraps it up for this edition. Feel free to share this video and don’t forget to subscribe to our mailing list to receive more HACCP Mentor videos like this.

Thanks for watching, I am Amanda Evans from HACCPmentor.com.

4 thoughts on “How to document your food safety hazards”

  1. Hi Amanda, may I ask if raw material components and/or specifications shouls also be included in the Hazard Analysis and Risk Assessment? Thank you.

  2. Slavica Jovanovic

    Thanks Amanda, wor your specifik, and excelent coments, wich I consider wery usefull. As the metter of hands, paper is much better. Also, I have questions for you: Now here in Montenegro its wery popular to make fresh yuices of fruit and vegetables. Do they have to desinfect fruit? How long they can keep fresh juice? Thank you very much, Slavica

    1. Hi Slavica……there are many countries that require the santising of fresh fruit and vegetables due to the risk of listeria contamination. I cannot give you an overall answer as to the shelf life of these freshly juiced products. You would need to conduct your on validation studies to confirm the expiry date based on the method of production and storage conditions that you undertake.

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