How to Create your HACCP plan?

 Why should you have an HACCP plan?

A Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) plan is a document prepared in accordance with the principles of HACCP to control food risk and thus keep food safe from potential hazards be they biological, chemical, or physical. Since 2006 implementing an HACCP plan has been a legal requirement for all UK-based food businesses. As such, failure to provide an adequate and relevant plan upon inspection may result in heavy fines, and eventual closure of your business. 

As a key contributor to achieving HACCP certification, creating and implementing an HACCP plan not only ensures that food is safe for customer consumption, but also provides your business with a cost effective system for the control of food safety, that will ultimately save your business money. Implementing an HACCP plan will further benefit your business by improving food quality standards, organising your staff thus promoting teamwork and efficiency, and by providing evidence of due diligence. 


How to set up the HACCP principles?


Every HACCP plan should be built upon the seven principles of HACCP. However, before these principles there are five preliminary steps that must be taken.


  • Assembling a dedicated HACCP team.
    The first step in creating your HACCP plan is building a team of individuals with specific knowledge and expertise appropriate to your business. This team will be tasked with conducting all HACCP related activities.


Due to the complex nature of these requirements, the HACCP team may require assistance from outside experts. However, avoid delegating the complete development of the plan to outside sources as this may result in a plan that is erroneous, incomplete, and lacking in support at the local level.


  • Describing the products and the process
    For each specific product, comprehensive descriptions must be provided by the HACCP team. This includes ingredients lists, processing methods, and proper distribution conditions to ensure that food products do not become hazardous.


  • Identifying the intended use and users
    The HACCP team should identify the intended consumers of each product, for example the general public. Subgroups, who may be hypersensitive to these products should also be identified, for example pregnant women.


  • Developing a process flow diagram
    To provide a clear, simple outline of the steps involved in your business’s processes, a flow diagram, which covers all the steps that are directly under the control of the establishment, should be created. This need not be overcomplicated; a simple, box type flow diagram will suffice.


  • Validating the diagram and ensuring compliance with sanitation requirements
    Finally, the HACCP team should perform an onsite review of the business’ processes to ensure the accuracy of the flow diagram. Any modifications to the diagram should be made as necessary.


What are the seven principles of HACCP?

There are seven principles of HACCP that ensure the safety of food products. Each must be implemented as part of an effective HACCP plan. 


1) Conduct a Hazard Analysis

The first principle involves the HACCP team performing a hazard analysis on each step of the process. This analysis can be broken down into two stages. Hazard identification, where the team develops a list of potential hazards, and hazard evaluation, where the team decides which hazards should be addressed within the HACCP plan. 


There are three objectives of carrying out hazard analysis:

  • The identification of hazards and associated control methods.

  • The detection of ‘needs for changes’ to a product or process to ensure safety.

  • To give a basis for determining critical control points.

It is important to remember that hazard analysis must be done thoroughly and correctly, as failure to do so will negatively impact the entire plan.


2) Identify Critical Control Points

A critical control point (CCP) is defined as a step at which control can be applied and is essential to prevent or eliminate a food safety hazard or reduce it to an acceptable level. The HACCP team should use a CCP decision tree to help identify the critical control points in the process. It is also important to remember that one CCP can control multiple hazards, just as one hazard may require multiple CCP’s to be successfully controlled. 


3) Establish Critical Limits

Critical limits are the maximum or minimum values to which biological, chemical or physical parameters must be controlled at a CCP to ensure safety. If food is stored, prepared, or distributed outside of these critical limits it should be deemed unsafe. Thus, critical limits help us differentiate between safe and unsafe conditions. 


4) Monitor Critical Control Points
Once CCPs have been established it is vital that they are effectively monitored. This requires planning and observation to ensure that critical limits are not exceeded. Monitoring should therefore be a systematic procedure, the record of which can be used during your verification process.


5) Establish Corrective Actions
Despite CCPs and critical limits, issues of food safety may continue to arise. If there is a deviation away from critical limits or any other kind of problem occurs, corrective action should be taken to solve the problem immediately.


Corrective actions should therefore include the following elements: 

  • Determine and correct the cause of non-compliance.

  • Determine the disposition of non-compliant product.

  • Record the corrective actions that have been taken.

Specific corrective actions should be developed in advance for each CCP and be included
in the HACCP plan. At the very least, the plan should specify what is to be done if a
specific deviation occurs, who is responsible for implementing these actions, and how a
record of the actions should be made and maintained.


6) Establish Verification procedure
Verifying the HACCP plan is a process which determines the validity of the plan and ensures that the current system is operating in accordance to it. The HACCP team may identify activities such as auditing of CCP's, record review, prior shipment review, instrument calibration and product testing as part of the verification activities.


7) Establish Record Keeping Procedures
Records of the HACCP system must be maintained and should generally include the following.


  • A summary of the hazard analysis, including the rationale for determining hazards and control measures.

  • The HACCP Plan.

  • Listing of the HACCP team and assigned responsibilities.

  • Description of the food, its distribution, intended use, and consumer.

  • Verified flow diagram.

  • Support documentation such as validation records.

  • Records that are generated during the operation of the plan.

  • HACCP Plan Summary Table that includes information for:
    Steps in the process that are CCPs
    The hazard(s) of concern.
    Critical limits
    Monitoring*
    Corrective actions*
    Verification procedures and schedule*
    Record-keeping procedures*


* A brief summary of position responsible for performing the activity and the procedures and frequency should be provided on these processes.