Food safety concerns continue to grow at a rapid pace. New government regulations and normative instructions, in parallel with expectations from consumers and the entire chain, force food producers, feed mills, and animal nutrition companies to refine their focus on food safety.
The structure and management of food safety programs and systems have been transforming the global productive chain of food and pet food. And it is here that the operationalization of the HACCP system in the industry becomes essential for more efficient analysis and more effective control mechanisms.
But, after all, what is HACCP?
In general, the HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) system is a control system for food safety that focuses on the analysis and control of biological, chemical, and physical hazards in all stages of the food production chain and in the animal products industry.
By placing the focus of control from the production of inputs used in production to the consumption of final products, the HACCP has as its main objective to bring more clarity and predictability to the control of hazards inherent in food production based on the prevention, elimination or reduction of remaining hazards and directly associated with food or that may result from its processing or handling in all stages of the production chain. Thus, it enables companies and inspection bodies to evaluate and obtain standards of identity and quality of products and services in the area of food aiming to protect the health of consumers – be they us, humans, or animals.
The Codex Alimentarius Commission, a joint FAO and WHO program, provides general guidelines for the application of the system and provides insight into each different step along the entire food chain, from primary production to final consumption. It also reinforces the importance of the participation of the company’s entire structure in a committed and active way, in addition to the multidisciplinarity required for an effective system
The HACCP indicates 7 principles that guide the implementation of the system, whether in producing companies, government agencies, or even consumers. The principles are:
1st Principle: Identify and conduct a hazard analysis
Collect and evaluate information on hazards and the conditions that determine their existence in order to decide which are significant to food safety.
2nd Principle: Determining Critical Control Points (CCP)
To apply an essential control to prevent or eliminate a food safety hazard or reduce it to an acceptable level. This determination must consider the points, procedures, operations, and steps – whether production, distribution, or consumption – at which control measures must be applied.
3rd Principle: Establishing critical limits
Point out the criteria that separate the acceptable from the unacceptable, that is, the maximum and/or minimum values that, when not met, make it impossible to guarantee the safety of the food.
4th Principle: Establish a system for monitoring the control of CCPs
Conduct a planned sequence of observations or measurements of control parameters to evaluate whether a CCP is within the acceptable limit.
5th Principle: Establish the corrective actions to be taken
Establish the corrective actions that should be applied when the monitoring system indicates that a particular CCP is not under control.
6th Principle: Establish the verification procedures
Apply methods, procedures, analyses, and other assessments to, in addition to monitoring, determine whether the HACCP system is working effectively.
7th Principle: Establish registration procedures
Establish a system of documentation of all procedures and records appropriate to these principles and their application.
It is also worth mentioning that HACCP is not an isolated quality and food safety management system. Before applying it in any area of the food chain, it is necessary that the company or agency that is implementing it already has the prerequisite programs, such as Good Hygiene Practices and Good Manufacturing Practices. These should be well established and in full operation, and should be checked in order to facilitate the effective application and implementation of the HACCP system. In Brazil, the implementation of the HACCP system is compulsory for food manufacturers (see Ordinance 1428 of 1993 from the Ministry of Health and Ordinance 46/1998 from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply – MAPA).
How will it help my factory or production?
The HACCP, together with other systems such as GMP and ISO guidelines, form a quality management system that provides a safer environment, focusing on prevention, improving production conditions and, consequently, the quality of finished products within technical standards and specifications. The implementation of the tools forms the basis and the beginning of the system, for this reason they are rarely independent and always add up to an increasingly high quality management effectiveness.
In a feed mill for example, HACCP will help the company to:
- obtain a high quality standardized feed
- have low loss rates with lower costs
- implement a more effective supplier qualification management
- control raw materials and packaging used
- monitor water potability and sanitization of reservoirs
- implement pest and waste control programs
- adopt effective product traceability programs
The role of a laboratory information management system
However, even with increasingly stringent regulations and demanding consumer markets, many companies struggle to fully understand the risks associated with food safety (or the lack of) and how to mitigate these potentially unknown risks. As quality has become a business-level risk, companies need to adopt increasingly clear, secure, predictable, and scalable sources to identify and mitigate the many risks facing their organization.
Day in and day out, quality supervisors and laboratory managers are faced with a mind-boggling amount of data that they must evaluate to maintain the integrity of the company’s quality programs. The challenge within the food, beverage, and pet food industry is especially more difficult, because product safety is dependent on rapid and accurate laboratory testing and analysis. This is why HACCP, as we saw earlier, and its 7 principles are a powerful tool for companies to provide safe, quality food.
Sample management and the performance of analytical procedures are central elements of HACCP. You, as a company, can internalize these processes or even outsource them using independent testing laboratories – the fact is that for both options, the analyses made on samples of raw materials or products end up depending on quality information, structured and relevant for your operation. This is what quality management and laboratory software, such as Labinfy, is designed for.
By enabling laboratory managers or quality professionals to quickly integrate analytical and quality control processes with laboratory processes, routines, and analysis statistics, quality management platforms facilitate the operationalization of minimum food safety systems and guidelines for companies in this industry, such as HACCP. Below we list how they can facilitate the definition of each of the 7 principles we presented above:
1st Principle: Identify and conduct a hazard analysis
During these first steps, the laboratories are identifying the potential hazards associated with each step of the production process, the probability of occurrence, and the severity of each of these hazards, analyzing everything from the selection of raw materials to the final product. Laboratory management systems make this process more effective by providing a historical view that allows quality supervisors and technicians to identify and analyze these hazards more quickly and accurately, and even create analysis routines for sampled items – whether ingredient or finished product.
2nd Principle: Determining Critical Control Points (CCP)
When raising the control points that must be applied, laboratory or quality managers need a constant view of analytical data that determine the quality of raw materials, the safety of water and effluents, and the correct guarantee levels of manufactured products. Thus, the systems enable you to register the items that will be analyzed and manage the entire sample cycle, from receipt at the plant, through laboratory analysis, to the issuance of reports and test reports. Thus, the possibility of finding errors and quickly adjusting the sampling and testing processes becomes more effective.
3rd Principle: Establishing critical limits
The establishment of maximum and/or minimum values that make it impossible to guarantee food safety and ensure the control of each CCP and its compliance becomes a simple and predictable process in laboratory and quality management systems. You quickly to set standards and acceptable limits for moisture, water activity, acidity, flavor, color, among others, which bring the scientific and analytical basis necessary to define non-compliance.
Labinfy provides the possibility to register different default values for the analyzed items, whether raw materials or finished products. These special defaults can be applicable generically or specific by item, customer, supplier, or even by different dates. When performing the analyses, the system automates the analytical procedures, quickly pointing out which items are out of the standards for you to take control measures – such as re-analyzing the sample or even rejecting for production.
4th Principle: Establish a system for monitoring the control of CCPs
By measuring control parameters to assess whether critical control points are within acceptable values during the monitoring process, quality management and laboratory systems such as Labinfy can present good opportunities for continuous improvement by identifying and recording non-compliant sample results. For example, let’s assume that the company is having problems with corn suppliers, identifying too much variability in the protein value of this raw material. The system can help laboratories and quality professionals to quickly categorize and have a history of each one, analyzing the variability in chemical composition found in the samples taken at the plant.
To make this process easier, Labinfy will display statistics and information from the analyses performed in the lab, with simple metrics and advanced graphs for data exploration and analysis with the necessary analytical detail. Among them, with the Shewhart chart you can monitor the mean and variability of analyses performed by comparing with different confidence intervals from the standard deviation.
5th Principle: Establish the corrective actions to be taken
When establishing the corrective actions to be taken in the identification of standards and limits outside acceptable CCP, the laboratory needs to have scientific evidence or relevant data that attests this event and that is related to these actions. Of course, the analytical result itself will come from the results of the different physicochemical and microbiological analyses performed. However, the laboratory management system will enable you to have a record of these incidents and quickly see which results are outside the previously established standards.
Labinfy allows lab coordinators or supervisors to have a broad view of all laboratory activity, from the balancing of analyses among technicians to sample release. Thus, this enables end-to-end management of analytical routines and procedures for quicker decision making, more effective corrective actions, and simple but powerful monitoring of processes and professionals performed within the lab.
6th Principle: Establish the verification procedures
To confirm the effectiveness of the HACCP system in use, the application of system compliance assessment procedures is essential. An important ally to ensure that methods and procedures are always correct is the automation of workflows so that analysis routines, analysis methodologies, and equipment are always consistent. This is one of the main advantages of a laboratory and quality management system.
As an example, in Labinfy you can create different analytical procedures that will relate items, customers, suppliers, analyses, equipment and trained technicians, which ensures effective standardization of laboratory processes. Thus, by combining powerful monitoring with more standardized, documented and predictable workflows, the identification of sources of quality deviations and the establishment of responsibilities make it possible to implement a more effective evaluation and management system. Add to that a complete history and relevant information from past samples, and you will achieve better traceability of the inputs used, helping to ensure better food safety and quality.
7th Principle: Establish registration procedures
Finally, by identifying all these previous points, the HACCP system provides that the actions and points found are duly registered. Having this information always accessible, from anywhere and at any time, makes it possible that the lead time or turnaround time in the laboratory is shorter and that the control actions are, in fact, correctly applied. The monitoring that culminates in the release or rejection of the samples, after the correct analysis, makes it possible to associate notes and comments that further assist in an even more effective documentation and that contains all the necessary requirements. You can, for example, issue test reports for your external customers or allow internal customers to access the systems and have access to information specific to their area for continuous improvement of your operations.
Raise the bar for quality management and food safety
The implementation of systems that make your procedures more consistent, standardized, with clear and specific control mechanisms, is both a necessity and an opportunity in the industry. Whether because government regulations are increasingly strict and consumers demand superior and constant quality, or because they bring real competitive advantages to the product process by putting the focus on what really matters: quality and safety of food produced and used.
And in this sense, for all quality management and food safety systems that can be adopted, starting from GMP, through Feed & Food, ISO standards, to HACCP, a good laboratory and quality management program will allow you to have controls that are always transparent to all production stakeholders and makes compliance better enforced. Standardization of laboratory processes, cost savings over time, a positive image in the marketplace, and consistently high quality standards – with laboratory management systems like Labinfy, you will have an easier and faster path to success.
