Hygiene, Sanitation and Food Safety Assurance Programs (HACCP, GMP, Halal)
Prerequisites before HACCP
GMP and hygiene programs are the foundation: premises, pest control, personal hygiene, training, water, calibration, traceability, and recall. HACCP cannot work on a dirty site.
HACCP - seven principles
- Conduct a hazard analysis.
- Determine critical control points (CCPs).
- Set critical limits.
- Monitor each CCP.
- Establish corrective actions.
- Verify the system.
- Keep documentation and records.
In practice this follows the Codex 12-step sequence: assemble the team, describe the product, identify use, draw the flow diagram, verify it on site, then apply the principles. A CCP is a step where control is essential - cooking, chilling, metal detection. Monitoring must be continuous or frequent enough to detect loss of control.
Malaysian schemes
- MeSTI - MOH's food-safety assurance scheme for SMEs, based on hygiene and GMP elements.
- GMP - good manufacturing practice for premises, equipment, and process control.
- Halal - JAKIM certification against the Malaysian halal standard (MS 1500), requiring halal sourcing, separation from non-halal, dedicated equipment, and a halal assurance management system.
Worked example
A chicken satay producer sets a cooking CCP with a critical limit of 74 °C at the centre. The monitor checks every batch with a calibrated probe and records it. If a batch reads 68 °C, the corrective action is to continue cooking, re-probe, and record the deviation - not to adjust the record. Verification would include periodic calibration and review of records.
Traps that cost marks
- Confusing verification with monitoring - monitoring happens at the CCP in real time.
- Treating a critical limit as a target rather than a boundary.
- Claiming HACCP certification without prerequisite programs.
- Assuming halal certification is a one-off label with no ongoing system.
- Forgetting records: no record means the control cannot be demonstrated.