International HACCP Alliance courses, what is your opinion/experience?
Last year, I took a HACCP Alliance training course (3 days) (TAMU Center) because it is mandatory for auditing SQF.
Here are my comments for the training course.
-The HACCP Alliance was formed for the meat & poultry industry in USA and they sell training courses to all food sectors but focused only in the meat and poultry industry.
-It was included in our material the previous version of the Codex Alimentarius (1997) and not the actual (2003)
-When the trainers talked about the 21 CFR 110.110 (maximum levels of natural or unavoidable defects in foods for human use that present no health hazard) they talked about defects in food like “color”, “sizes”, “brown spots”, etc. and not about rodent hair, insect fragments, mold, etc. (which was the correct issue).
-About 40% of the time the trainers talked about bacteria, symptoms, etc. and only 60% of the time about the requirements of HACCP,
-The statistics about outbreaks were too old, (most recent from 2000)
-They did not talk about micotoxins and allergens (not common in the meat and poultry sector).
-They mentioned that the Food Safety system has to be “unlinked” of the QMS and all the quality issues, when the actual trend of all management systems it’s totally the opposite.
I’m not sure if all training courses of the HACCP Alliance are standardized, but for me, it wasn’t practical.
Last year, I took a HACCP Alliance training course (3 days) (TAMU Center) because it is mandatory for auditing SQF.
Here are my comments for the training course.
-The HACCP Alliance was formed for the meat & poultry industry in USA and they sell training courses to all food sectors but focused only in the meat and poultry industry.
-It was included in our material the previous version of the Codex Alimentarius (1997) and not the actual (2003)
-When the trainers talked about the 21 CFR 110.110 (maximum levels of natural or unavoidable defects in foods for human use that present no health hazard) they talked about defects in food like “color”, “sizes”, “brown spots”, etc. and not about rodent hair, insect fragments, mold, etc. (which was the correct issue).
-About 40% of the time the trainers talked about bacteria, symptoms, etc. and only 60% of the time about the requirements of HACCP,
-The statistics about outbreaks were too old, (most recent from 2000)
-They did not talk about micotoxins and allergens (not common in the meat and poultry sector).
-They mentioned that the Food Safety system has to be “unlinked” of the QMS and all the quality issues, when the actual trend of all management systems it’s totally the opposite.
I’m not sure if all training courses of the HACCP Alliance are standardized, but for me, it wasn’t practical.
