Skip to content

Topic · Food Safety Plan

The HACCP Approach

Background: Why Every Restaurant Needs a Food Safety Plan and Step-by-Step: Building a Food Safety Plan in your Food Handler Certificate course cover 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 explain what HACCP is and why it is the backbone of your Food Safety Plan. You will be able to:

  • Say what HACCP stands for and where it comes from.
  • Explain the difference between prerequisite programs and HACCP controls.
  • List the five preliminary steps and the seven principles.

What HACCP is

HACCP stands for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points. It was developed in the 1960s by Pillsbury with NASA to make sure food sent into space was safe, and it is now the international standard set out by the Codex Alimentarius. Instead of testing the finished dish, HACCP prevents problems by controlling the few steps where a hazard can be stopped.

Two layers of control

  • Prerequisite programs (PRPs) are the everyday basics: cleaning and sanitizing, pest control, personal hygiene, supplier approval, equipment maintenance and staff training. They keep the whole kitchen under control.
  • HACCP controls sit on top of the PRPs and focus on the specific steps in a recipe or process where a hazard must be controlled, such as cooking chicken or cooling a stock.

If your PRPs are weak, no HACCP plan will save you. Build the basics first.

The 12 steps

Before the seven principles, prepare the ground with five preliminary steps:

  1. Assemble your team (even if it is you and your sous-chef).
  2. Describe the food and how it is sold.
  3. Identify its intended use and who eats it (for example, children, seniors, people with allergies).
  4. Draw a flow diagram of every step from receiving to service.
  5. Check the flow diagram on the floor, during a real service.

Then apply the seven principles, one per lesson in this section:

  1. Conduct a hazard analysis.
  2. Identify the critical control points (CCPs).
  3. Establish critical limits.
  4. Monitor each CCP.
  5. Establish corrective actions.
  6. Verify that the plan works.
  7. Keep records.
Scroll to Top