HACCP is a systematic, proactive, and preventive tool for assuring product quality, reliability, and safety. It is a structured approach that applies technical and scientific principles to analyze, evaluate, prevent, and control the risk or adverse consequence(s) of hazard(s) due to the design, development, production, and use of products.
HACCP consists of the following seven steps:
(1) conduct a hazard analysis and identify preventive measures for each step of the process;
(2) determine the critical control points;
(3) establish critical limits;
(4) establish a system to monitor the critical control points;
(5) establish the corrective action to be taken when monitoring indicates that the critical control points are not in a state of control;
(6) establish system to verify that the HACCP system is working effectively;
(7) establish a record-keeping system.
Potential Areas of Use(s)
HACCP might be used to identify and manage risks associated with physical, chemical and biological hazards (including microbiological contamination). HACCP is most useful when product and process understanding is sufficiently comprehensive to support identification of critical control points. The output of a HACCP analysis is risk management information that facilitates monitoring of critical points not only in the manufacturing process but also in other life cycle phases.
