Food Safety, Hygiene and HACCP
Food Safety, Hygiene and HACCP is the highest-weighted technical domain in most entry certifications and the one where vague answers fail. You need the temperature and time limits cold, the seven HACCP principles in order, and the ability to separate a control point from a critical control point.
The numbers
- Danger zone 5–63 °C (41–145 °F in US practice); keep food out of it or limit the time spent in it.
- Cold holding ≤ 5 °C; hot holding ≥ 63 °C; frozen storage ≤ −18 °C.
- Poultry, stuffed items and reheated food to a core ≥ 74 °C; minced meat ≥ 71 °C.
- Two-stage cooling: 63 → 21 °C within 2 hours, then 21 → 5 °C within a further 4 hours.
- Handwashing: warm water, soap, 20 seconds, disposable towel; on entry, after raw protein, after bins, after the toilet, after a phone.
HACCP in seven principles
1 Hazard analysis. 2 Identify CCPs. 3 Set critical limits. 4 Monitor. 5 Corrective actions. 6 Verification (and validation). 7 Records. A CCP is a step where loss of control creates an unacceptable hazard and a measurable limit exists - cooking, chilling, hot holding. Sanitising a board is a control point, not a CCP.
Worked example
You cool 20 L of stock in a deep pot in the walk-in overnight. Why it fails: the core stays in the danger zone for hours, so the critical limit of 21 °C within 2 hours cannot be met. Corrective action: decant into shallow 50 mm gastronorm pans or use a blast chiller; probe and record at 2 hours; if the limit is missed, discard - reheating does not make it safe, because Bacillus cereus and Clostridium perfringens toxins are heat stable.
Traps that cost marks
Muddling verification with validation; writing 'clean the kitchen' as a critical limit (unmeasurable); confusing cleaning (removes soil) with sanitising (reduces microbes on a clean surface); ignoring records, which are the only part an auditor actually sees.