Study sheet: Food Safety and HACCP

📋 Course Outline

1. Food Safety Meaning and Aims
2. Food Crises and Consumer Confidence
3. Food Hazard Categories
4. Veterinary Roles in Food Safety
5. Prerequisites and Control Measures
6. HACCP Foundations and History
7. HACCP Development Principles

📅 Key Dates

1. 1981Contaminated colza oil caused a food crisis in Spain.
2. 1996Mad cow disease caused a food crisis in the United Kingdom.
3. 1999Chicken dioxins caused a food crisis in Belgium.

📖 1. Food Safety Meaning and Aims

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Food safety : FAO — Exists when people at all times have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs.

★ Must-know

• Food safety implies: adequate food supply and availability, stable supply without seasonal fluctuations or shortages, access to food, good quality and food safety

• The aims of food safety are:

  • the availability of healthy and safe food
  • consumer health and wellness
  • food crisis control

Further detail

• In developed countries, food safety is strongly associated with hygiene and food safety controls.

📖 2. Food Crises and Consumer Confidence

📝 Essential Points

• Food safety crises create a social and economic priority, making it necessary to restore consumer confidence through an effective and credible food safety system.

💡 Memory Hook

1981 colza oil → 1996 mad cows → 1999 chicken dioxins → 2011 cucumber crisis → 2019 listeria

📖 3. Food Hazard Categories

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Food hazard : A biological, chemical or physical agent in food, or a condition of food, that can cause an adverse health effect.

★ Must-know

• The three hazard categories are:

  • physical hazards such as wood, glass, metal, jewellery and teeth
  • chemical hazards such as toxins, mycotoxins, heavy metals, additives, disinfectants and pesticides
  • biological hazards such as bacteria, parasites, viruses and prions

• A hazard may be found because:

  • it is present
  • food is contaminated with it
  • it increases
  • it survives or persists

📌 Foodborne bacterial disease may result from infection, intoxication or toxi-infection.

Further detail

📌 Chemical hazards may cause long-term carcinogenic or accumulative effects and short-term allergic reactions or acute toxicity.

• Examples of foodborne bacteria listed in the course include Campylobacter jejuni, Listeria monocytogenes, Staphylococcus aureus, Clostridium botulinum, Clostridium perfringens, Escherichia coli, Vibrio spp., Yersinia enterocolitica, Shigella spp., Bacillus cereus and Salmonella spp.

💡 Memory Hook

B-C-P: Biological, Chemical, Physical

📖 4. Veterinary Roles in Food Safety

★ Must-know

• Veterinary professionals protect public health through the consumption of safe and healthy food and protect consumers’ economic interests concerning product quality and authenticity.

• Veterinary supervision and monitoring cover food and food establishments throughout the food chain, from farm to table, with slaughterhouse inspection as an exclusive veterinary activity.

Further detail

• Government veterinary roles include: inspection and control throughout the food chain, advice on food law, action during food crises

• Veterinarians serving the food industry apply mandatory self-control through HACCP, implement voluntary quality systems, perform appropriate food analyses and participate in research, development and innovation.

💡 Memory Hook

Government → food industry → private practice

📖 5. Prerequisites and Control Measures

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• Control measure : Any action or activity used to prevent, eliminate or reduce a food safety hazard to an acceptable level.

★ Must-know

📌 Prerequisites provide appropriate general working conditions throughout an enterprise, whereas critical control points address specific hazard points or stages for a particular product and production line.

• The prerequisite plans are:
  • water quality control
  • cleaning and disinfection
  • training and control of food handlers
  • preventive maintenance
  • pest control and surveillance
  • waste management
  • traceability control

Further detail

• The five sources of hazards are:
  • manipulators
  • material
  • method
  • milieu
  • machinery

💡 Memory Hook

The 5 M’s: Manipulators, Material, Method, Milieu, Machinery

📖 6. HACCP Foundations and History

🔑 Key Concepts & Definitions

• HACCP : Means Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points and is an internationally recognized preventive food safety system.

★ Must-know

📌 European Regulation 852/2004 of 29 April 2004 requires food business operators to create, implement and maintain a food safety system based on HACCP principles.

• Pillsbury developed HACCP for NASA because food safety needed to be incorporated into food design rather than controlled only by analysis of the final product.

Further detail

• The Codex Alimentarius, associated with WHO and FAO, adopted HACCP as an effective food safety monitoring system from the 1980s.

💡 Memory Hook

NASA demanded designed-in safety → Pillsbury developed HACCP

📖 7. HACCP Development Principles

★ Must-know

• 🔄 The preliminary HACCP activities are: forming a multidisciplinary team, describing the product and distribution system, describing intended use and consumers, developing a process flow chart, checking the flow chart’s accuracy

• 🔄 HACCP development consists of: performing hazard analysis, establishing critical control points, setting critical limits, establishing monitoring, defining corrective actions and product removal, establishing verification, identifying records

📌 A HACCP flow chart must cover every company-controlled stage from receipt of raw materials to distribution of the finished product so that hazards are not overlooked or undervalued.

Further detail

• HACCP is preventive, dynamic, based on seven principles, focused on CCPs, and requires company self-control to obtain safe food.

💡 Memory Hook

Team → product → consumer → flowchart → hazards → CCPs → limits → monitoring → correction → verification → records

📊 Synthesis Tables

Prerequisites versus CCPs

Dimension	Prerequisites	Critical control points
Scope	General enterprise conditions	Specific product and production-line stages
Purpose	Protect consumer health through suitable working conditions	Control a specific hazard at a critical process point
Example	Hand cleaning and disinfection throughout the enterprise	A defined control point in a particular production process