Every food business in the UK has a legal responsibility to:

• make sure food is safe to eat
• make sure it doesn’t add, remove or treat food in a way that makes it harmful to eat

What is the importance of HACCP and an FSMS?

A very important part of fulfilling this legal duty is creating a Food Safety Management system (FSMS). A Food Safety Management System built on HACCP principles is a systematic, preventative approach used by food businesses to identify, evaluate, and control food safety hazards. The key reason for operating a FSMS is to ensure that you and your team have the tools and processes in place to produce safe food, consistently.

A FSMS can be divided into two elements - a Prerequisite plan and a HACCP plan.

What is a Prerequisite plan?

The pre-requisite plan is the list of standard requirements that have to be in place within your workplace to be able to produce safe food. They include basic hygiene, operational, and environmental conditions.

Food safety prerequisites include:

• Premises & Equipment
• Hygiene
• Cleaning & Sanitation
• Pest Control
• Supplier Control
• Waste Management

When should the prerequisites be put in place?

Prerequisites may seem like common sense, but they are absolutely fundamental. As these are the foundations on which your safe food business must be built, these prerequisites must be in place before you start to implement your HACCP plan. Without these food safety basics, any measures you bring in to support your HACCP plan are likely to be ineffective.

What does HACCP stand for in food safety?

HACCP is a system of risk assessment, originally created by NASA scientists, that breaks the process into seven logical steps. HACCP stands for:

HA: Hazard Analysis

CCP: Critical control points

Under the principles of HACCP, all safety risks are identified (Hazard Analysis) and appropriate measures (Critical Control Points) are put in place to either remove these risks or reduce them to a safe level .

What are the Seven Principles of HACCP?

Step 1: Conduct a Hazard Analysis 

Identify all potential biological (e.g., bacteria), chemical (e.g., cleaning agents), physical (e.g., glass) and allergenic (e.g. gluten) hazards that could occur at every step of food preparation, from goods-in to service.

Determine which of these hazards are significant and must be addressed by the HACCP plan.

Step 2: Determine Critical Control Points (CCPs) 

Identify the steps in the process where control is essential to prevent, eliminate, or reduce a significant hazard to an acceptable level.

Example: The cooking step for raw chicken is a CCP because it's the last chance to eliminate pathogens such as Salmonella through heat.

Step 3: Establish Critical Limits

Set the maximum or minimum value that a CCP must meet to prevent the hazard. This limit is the pass/fail boundary.

Example: The critical limit for cooking chicken might be an internal temperature of 75 degrees C for 15 seconds.

Step 4: Establish Monitoring Procedures

Define how the CCP will be regularly measured and observed to ensure the Critical Limit is met. This includes what will be measured, who will measure it, how often, and how.

Example: Using a calibrated probe thermometer to check the internal temperature of every batch of chicken at the end of the cooking process and recording the result.

Step 5: Establish Corrective Actions

Determine the immediate steps to be taken if monitoring shows a CCP is not at the correct level

Example: If the chicken only reaches 65 degrees C, the corrective action is to continue cooking it until the 75 degrees C limit is reached.

Step 6: Establish Verification Procedures

Set procedures to review the entire HACCP system and confirm that it is working effectively (i.e., that the plan is valid and being followed).

Example: Review the monitoring records weekly, and calibrate thermometers regularly.

Step 7: Establish Documentation and Record-Keeping (Principle 7)

Keep accurate records of all procedures and data, including the hazard analysis, the CCPs, the monitoring checks, and any corrective actions taken. This is essential for demonstrating compliance during regulatory inspections.

Who is responsible for creating and implementing a FSMS / HACCP plan?

According to law, if you operate a food business in the UK, you must have a food safety management system based on HACCP principles. The responsibility for this plan ultimately sits with the business owner / operator - but it is important that the plan is created by someone who has an accurate, working knowledge of day to day operations. In order to be useful and comprehensive, that plan must reflect the way the business works, and controls must be achievable. Ideally, like any risk assessment, creating HACCP plan should involve the thoughts and feedback of the people who will be expected to use it.

When should a HACCP plan be checked?

It can be tempting to treat a HACCP plan as a one off activity; once all plans and control measures are in place, your operation is safe. But many factors can change - people, menus, legislation, ingredients, best practice, equipment etc. Because of this your HACCP must be an evolving plan, that is regularly reviewed and changes with your business. You should review your plan with your team annually - and at any time a major change happens within your business that affects your orignal hazard analysis.

Are there any resources I can use to help me create my HACCP plan?

For small food businesses, the Safer Food, Better Business resource provided by the Food Standards Agency is a great place to start. This book walks you through each area of your business and tells you what you need to look out for, what records you need to keep, and how often you need to review your processes.

Safer Food, Better Business highlights the importance of good record keeping when producing food that is safe to eat. Good recordkeeping instils a culture of diligence within your food business and will also help prove to an EHO that you are doing things right.

The key records that most food businesses will need to keep are:

• Delivery checklist, showing that temperature, dates, packaging and labels are checked for all food deliveries
• Fridge and freezer temperatures, checked twice daily
• Core cooking temperature of high risk foods checked daily
• Cooling times and temperatures of all high risk foods that are cooled
• Kitchen and premises cleaning schedule
• Ingredients listings, including the 14 listed allergens

For more information, The Safer Food Group offer a Level 2 HACCP awareness course that looks into each area of Food Management in closer detail, explaining how to get it right – and what can happen when you don’t!