A Complete Guide To HACCP Food Safety

If you’re looking to implement a HACCP food safety program, this series of Back Burner posts will help you get started.  If you’re looking for ways to improve your existing food safety program, this is also a great place to start.  Food safety is a critical part of your food service business, and over the years, HACCP has proven itself to be one of the most effective ways to ensure your customers eat good food in...

Food Safety Tips: Prerequisite Programs

Those of you familiar with the HACCP approach to food safety know that HACCP is just one part of the food safety puzzle in your restaurant.  It’s very good at managing cooking and holding temperatures for food product, which should be considered the first line of defense against pathogens that could sicken customers.  But HACCP also relies heavily on what it calls...

HACCP Principle 7 – Keep Good Records

Of course, all the work you’ve put into the first 6 principles of HACCP won’t do you any good at all if you don’t have accurate records.  In the event that your business is implicated in a food borne illness outbreak, all of your HACCP efforts only help protect you if you have clear, accurate records of your food preparation process, and you are able to prove...

HACCP Principle 6 – Ongoing Verification

Now we are getting into the multiple levels of control that make a HACCP program so effective.  Level 1 is monitoring: people who are directly involved with the food product at the Critical Control Point checking to make sure ...

HACCP Principle 5: Develop Corrective Actions

So now you have CCPs, Critical Limits, and monitoring procedures for your budding HACCP program.  You know what you are going to control, where you are going...

HACCP Principle 4 – Establish Monitoring Procedures

Now that you’ve established your Critical Control Points and Critical Limits for every preparation process and every menu item in your restaurant, it’s time to monitor.  Limits and CCPs don’t do any good if there’s no enforcement.  The first...

HACCP Principle 3: Set Critical Limits

Every CCP you identified by grouping menu items into processes now must have a critical limit set for it in order to become an official part of your HACCP program.  The FDA’s Food Code and your local Board...

HACCP Principle 2 – The Difference Between CCP & SOP

This post is a continuation of last week’s HACCP post and the second in a series of posts here on The Back Burner that will completely outline a proper HACCP program for your restaurant. A Critical Control Point (CCP) is a specific place where food can become contaminated.  After conducting the ...