If you run a business that deals with food, this page includes the standard paragraphs that we refer to when we write to you following a visit we have made to your premises.
Regulation (EC) No 852/2004, Article 5
All food business operators are required to put in place, implement and maintain a permanent procedure or procedures based on HACCP Principles. HACCP stands for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points and is simply a process you must use to try and make sure that the food you prepare is safe for your customers to eat. In other words, you must identify the things in your day to day operation which might go wrong (hazards) which can result in food poisoning or food contamination and put in place good practices and procedures to stop things going wrong (controls), for example monitoring of food temperatures. Specifically, you must:
- Identify any hazards that must be prevented, eliminated, or reduced to acceptable levels.
- Identify the critical control points at the step or steps at which control is essential to prevent or eliminate a hazard or reduce it to acceptable levels.
- Establish critical limits at control points which separate acceptability from unacceptability for the prevention, elimination or reduction of identified hazards.
- Establish and implement effective monitoring procedures at critical control points.
- Establish corrective actions when monitoring indicates that a critical control point in not under control.
- Establish procedures to verify that the measures you have in place are working effectively.
- Establish documents and records to demonstrate the effective application of your control measures.