How to Identify Critical Control Points

Clean food preparation is critical

Critical control points are part of a Centers for Disease Control guideline and procedure known as Hazard Analysis & Critical Control Points (HACCP). They are the major factor that the HACCP revolves around, and are incredibly important. Critical control points are points during the life cycle of food that sanitation and safety standards can be applied, minimizing the risk factor of that food.

Things You'll Need

• A process description of how the food you are examining is prepared

Instructions

How to Identify Critical Control Points

1. Identify the hazards that you face. Before you can identify how to decrease hazards, you need to know what the hazards are. Look at how your food is processed, and where it came from. What hazards are there at the start (in meat there can be disease and bacteria), what are introduced during the process (cross contamination, bacterial growth due to sitting out during transportation). This will help you understand what control points you need.

2. Isolate the locations you can decrease the hazard. Critical control points are universal. For instance, if you're working with dairy, you will want to pasteurize it and then cool it. With meat, you want to keep it isolated and then cook it before eating.

3. Place limits on your critical control points. These are known as critical limits, and describe exactly how far the critical control point must be used to be considered safe. For instance, for meat to be considered safe by the FDA, it must be cooked at 165 degrees Fahrenheit for more than 15 seconds.

4. Monitor your critical control point and make sure that it's working right. If not, you may need to go through the steps again to identify hazards, how to control them, and how far to control them. Keep good records.

References

• 'Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point'; Center for Disease Control