A Guide to Food Hazards and Your Business
What do you need to do?
Identify Potential Hazards (ie things that might be harmful):
- Assess what possible food hazards there are in your business
- identify the areas where they could occur
- pinpoint those areas that are critical to ensuring food safety.
Introduce Controls
- Make sure you have adequate safety controls in place at those points critical to ensuring food safety
- regularly monitor the controls to check they are working effectively
- maintain and review all controls
- review your assessment, control and monitoring procedures periodically, and whenever the food operations change.
These are principles that underlie a formal system known as HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points). However, the regulations do not require that businesses use any specific or formal system. The nature and complexity of the system used will, in practice, depend on the nature and complexity of the business you operate. You do not have to keep written records of your analysis and monitoring procedures, though you may find them particularly useful if you run a large business or a small but high risk business. Also, records may be helpful when demonstrating compliance with the regulations.
Equally, what is now required by law is very much what many professionally run food businesses have always done as a matter of good practice. So it is possible you have all the necessary controls in place already.
Even so, by going through the process of assessing potential hazards, you might notice potential problems you had not considered before. You will certainly be able to check your controls are working properly. This is particularly important at points in your operation after which no further controls are applied which would eliminate or control food safety hazards.
Hazard analysis will also help you comply with other requirements of the regulations, by helping you to decide what level of control is necessary and appropriate to your business.
For further information please e-mail us at regulatory@fareham.gov.uk or contact Environmental Health on 01329 236100 Ext: 2387 / 2389.
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