Todays lesson will be a little bit more advanced, but will help many of you understand the principles behind food safety and how to determine the best way to control the food to ensure that the food is being prepared safely.

H.A.C.C.P. (pronounced as Hassip), stands for Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points, and is designed to allow the food service establishment to study the flow of food through the operation and determine where and how to make corrective actions to ensure that proper food safety procedures are being followed. H.A.C.C.P. was was originally designed when NASA asked the Pillsbury company to manufacture food for space flights.

A H.A.C.C.P. plan is designed around seven principles:

1. Conduct a hazard analysis
2. Determine critical control points (CCPs)
3. Establish critical limits
4. Establish monitoring procedures
5. Identify corrective actions
6. Verify that the system works
7. Establish procedures for record keeping and documentation

Lets take an example and run through these seven principles to better understand how they work.

Step 1. Conduct a hazard analysis

When looking at your menu items, look for how the items are processed within the facility. The most popular processes are: Preparing and serving without cooking (salads, cold sandwiches, etc), preparing and cooking for the same-day service (grilled chicken sandwiches, steaks, hamburgers, etc), and preparing, cooking, holding, cooling, reheating, and serving (chili, soups, some pasta dishes, etc). Next, it is important to determine which foods are considered Temperature Control for Safety (TCS) foods, and determine where food safety hazards are likely to appear for each food item, and determine what type of hazard could occur (physical, chemical, biological).

For example, At the Merou Grotto, I do my Dr. Ed’s Insane Chicken Sandwich, where I get the chicken delivered the same day as I will be cooking it. I have determined that bacteria (biological) is the most likely hazard that I would be dealing with.

Step 2. Determine critical control points (CCPs)

Now that we have the menu items separated by process and potential hazard, It is time to find the locations in the process where the hazards can be prevented, eliminated, or reduced to safe levels. Depending on the process involved with preparing a certain food item, there may be more than one CCP.

In my chicken sandwich example, I have identified that it must be handled safely throughout the process of removing excess fat and marinating; however, cooking is the only time in which bacteria would be “prevented, eliminated, or reduced to safe levels”, So cooking will be my CCP.

Step 3. Establish critical limits

For each CCP that is determined for each item, you must establish a minimum or maximum limit that must be met in order to “prevented, eliminate, or reduced to safe levels”.

In my example of the chicken sandwich, and as stated in one of the previous lessons, chicken needs to be cooked to a minimum 165 degrees F (74C) for 15 seconds. As this is the standard for food safety, I have adopted it as my critical limit for cooking my chicken sandwiches.

Step 4. Establish monitoring procedures

Once the critical limit has been established, you must then determine how that critical limit will be measured, when it will be measured, and how often it will be measured.

For my chicken sandwich, when I cook each chicken breast on the grill, I will check the internal temperature with a bimetallic stemmed thermometer (I would love a thermocouple or thermistor, but the Merou Grotto is a non-profit and they are rather pricey). I would insert the stem of the thermometer into the thickest part of the breast to determine the current temperature.

Step 5. Identify corrective actions

After you establish a monitoring procedure, you must then have a procedure in place that determines what you need to do if the critical limit is not met.

Again, as we discuss my insane chicken sandwiches, if the thermometer reveals that the breast is not above 165 degrees F, then I am to continue cooking the breast until it has reached the required temperature. A log is kept to notate this and all other corrective actions that are taken on the different food items.

Step 6. Verify that the system works

By using a temperature log to record that the critical limits are either being met or not, is how to determine if you are successfully “preventing, eliminating, or reducing to safe levels”, the possibility of foodborne contaminants.

These logs can help determine if, as with some suppliers, changes are being made to the products without your knowledge. An example of this would be a review of the temperature log and determining that more corrective actions are needed on certain days versus others. As with one company, it was found that on certain days they were receiving chicken breasts that were 6 ounces versus the standard 4 ounces that they normally received. This caused more corrective actions to be listed based on a thicker chicken breast.

Step 7. Establish procedures for record keeping and documentation

The entire H.A.C.C.P. plan works as long as you keep records of: monitoring activities, taking corrective actions, validating equipment to ensure proper working conditions), and working with suppliers (shelf life studies, invoices, specifications, etc).

At the Merou Grotto, I keep my temperature logs for three months and my invoices are electronic, so they are kept until I delete them (I used to keep paper copies for 60 days).

While the steps of the H.A.C.C.P. plan appears to be daunting, the procedures actually happen very quickly when you are working the system. Understanding where it is possible for food to become contaminated allows you to be better able to “prevent, eliminate, or reduce to safe levels” the possibility of causing a foodborne illness outbreaks.

If you have any questions about anything that I present in these lessons, or have a question about anything regarding food safety, please feel free to contact me.

Tomorrows lesson: How foods become unsafe.