An Introduction to HACCP system

We all are victims of food poisoning at least once in our lifetime. Microbial food-borne illness, or food poisoning, occurs commonly throughout the world by eating contaminated food. Every year millions of people suffer from vomiting and diarrhea and in each case they blame the food they ate. Most of the cases are mild and not being reported. Quite a few severe outbreaks which affect more victims is usually published by media and reported to the authorities.


Food Poisoning – How does it occur?

Many kinds of food poisoning are caused by germs called bacteria. Bacteria can be seen anywhere in the environment; in the food, soil, dust, in your hand, nose or lips. Most bacteria are helpful to human (for eg: Lactobacillus is the bacterium converting milk in to curd) and some can be drastic in nature. In normal room temperature it can be reproduced within seconds and in favorable conditions one bacterium will become one million in hours. Bacteria need nutrients, time and warmth to fasten their growth. Denying any of these will affect its growth rate. At 37ْC it can grow in the fastest level. However, bacteria multiply gradually from a temperature range between 5ْC to 65ْC. This temperature zone is called the danger zone. For avoiding food poisoning we need to keep the food away from danger zone.

For food poisoning to happen,

• There should be bacteria on the food

• The food must be kept for long time in the room temperature

• The food must be kept inside the danger zone (5ْC to 65ْC)

For avoiding food poisoning,

• All the food must be cooked above 65ْC

• If the cooked food is not consuming at the moment it must be kept inside the chiller below 5ْC.

• Reheat the chilled cooked food until it attains 82 ْC

• Wash your hands thoroughly to prevent bacteria coming from your hand to the food. ( All the good personal hygiene practices will be discussed later on)

*These are the basic things to avoid food poisoning. There are lots of other issues also which we will discuss on later sections.

Do you think a retail operator (Hotels, restaurants, supermarkets, caterers) can assure the safety of food they are serving by doing the above principles?

A retail operator must know that the raw food coming from the wholesale system, normally from the suppliers, can be contaminated with enough germs (bacteria) to cause his customer food borne illness. For e.g. what will happen if a retail operator ordered for fresh sea food and the supplier gave an already spoiled product? If he could not find spoilage at the time of receiving then it will definitely lead to food poisoning. So there should be a system which monitors the food operation from purchasing till receiving. We can call this system as food safety management system. Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point or HACCP is one of the widely used food safety management system around the world for ensuring the safety of the food in retail operation.

In the next section we discuss more about HACCP, its principles, procedures and implementation process in detail.


References:
http://www.faqs.org/
http://www.hi-tm.com/
http://www.uptodate.com/
Hygiene for Management by Richard Sprenger

Vacancy for hygiene officer

There is a vacancy for a Hygiene Officer through DWTC(Dubai world trade centre), interested candidates please send CV with photograph to -


ravi.arul@dwtc.com

He is the food safety manager for this organization