Previous magazine articles 
Better safe than sued...
When a new food safety programme originally developed by NASA becomes a legal EU requirement for all food-based firms in early 2006, the system looks set to be equally strict for earth-bound businesses. Gordon Hayburn explains the new regulations and provides a few pointers on what to look out for...
When the new food-hygiene laws come into force from January next year, they will affect all food and catering businesses throughout the country.
The Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) system was originally designed to ensure food for astronauts was safely prepared and packaged, and now the UK Government are bringing it down to earth to make our food safer.
In simple terms, all links in the food production chain will be required to understand the hazards that can affect the safety status of their products, and they must manage each step in the process to control these hazards. Catering managers need to understand how, why and where food could get contaminated and then manage their processes to prevent contamination occurring.
The new regulations mean that they must be able to demonstrate what they do to make food safely - and have this written down.
The first step for catering outlets developing a HACCP system is to decide who should set up the program.
Under the new regulations, it is the responsibility of the proprietor of the business to ensure that food safety requirements are met, although all staff need to be adequately trained to understand the implications of their tasks.
The next stage is to carefully identify each step in the preparation of every dish, starting with the purchase and receipt of the ingredients and ending with sale to the customer - and to formulate these steps into a flow chart.
Identifying what can be done to control potential hazards is the next step.
Controls may include the separation of raw and cooked foods to avoid cross-contamination, strict personal hygiene rules to avoid contamination by bacteria, and correct cooking to avoid survival of bacteria.
The next stage is to set standards, or critical limits, for the control points. These specify the conditions which must be met to ensure that the food will be safe.
For example, storing a product within a certain temperature range is a standard that can be checked and rectified if required.
Whenever there is a recipe change, an addition to the product range, a new activity is introduced or the structure or layout of the kitchen changes, the HACCP system will need to be reviewed. Even if no changes take place, the system should be reviewed at least once a year.
The new regulations might mean more paperwork but compliance will help to demonstrate food manufacturers' commitment to improved safety standards, 'from farm to fork'. In a sector where consumer confidence is vital, the new regulations ought to be embraced wholeheartedly.
This article has been edited from the original. To view the feature in full, please see Catering in Scotland magazine. To join our database, go to Media Pack on this website and click on Subscribe.
