Topic · Food Safety Plan
3- Establish Critical Limits
Background: From Menu to Hazards in your Food Handler Certificate course covers the theory. This lesson shows you how to apply it to your own Food Safety Plan.
Objective: By the end of this lesson, you will be able to set a measurable critical limit for each CCP. You will be able to:
- Define a critical limit.
- Write limits you can check with a thermometer or a clock.
- Use the standard limits for common restaurant CCPs.
What a critical limit is
A critical limit is the maximum or minimum value that separates safe from unsafe at a CCP. It must be measurable and checked in real time: a temperature, a time, a pH. “Cook until done” is not a critical limit; “74 °C (165 °F) internal for 15 seconds” is.
Common critical limits
| CCP | Typical critical limit |
|---|---|
| Cooking poultry, stuffed meats, reheated leftovers | 74 °C (165 °F) internal |
| Cooking ground meat | 71 °C (160 °F) internal |
| Cooking whole cuts of beef, pork, lamb | 63 °C (145 °F) internal (then rest) |
| Cooling | 60 °C → 20 °C (140 °F → 68 °F) within 2 hours, then to 4 °C (40 °F) within 4 more hours |
| Cold holding | 4 °C (40 °F) or colder |
| Hot holding | 60 °C (140 °F) or hotter |
| Reheating for hot holding | 74 °C (165 °F) within 2 hours |
Keep cold food at 4 °C (40 °F) or colder and hot food at 60 °C (140 °F) or hotter. Always check the exact limits your local health authority uses.
Tips
- Set an operating limit slightly stricter than the critical limit (for example, cool to 3 °C) so you can correct a drift before you break the rule.
- Write the limit on the recipe card, the label of the hot-holding unit and the cooling log, so the cook sees it where the work is done.