Low risk, high care or high risk?

The chilled food association put out an explanation a while back on what areas should be used for preparing chilled foods. My challenge I guess is that there is some considerable potential blurring between what could be a low risk area and what could be a high care area.

I used to think it was easy but consider this application.

A bulk chilled product is brought into an area, unwrapped, portioned and repacked. If done on an industrial scale, would you expect any of these processes to take place in a high care or high risk environment?

BUMP.

Hello GMO,

Please could you explain to me 'a high care or high risk environment', quite difficult for me to understand this difference - due to the language,

Regards,

Emmanuel

Hi,

Under BRC definitions for high care and high risk are:

High Care Area (Environment)
An area designed to a high standard where practices relating to personnel, ingredients, equipment, packaging and environment aim to minimize product contamination by pathogenic micro-organisms.


High Risk Area
A physically segregated area, designed to a high standard of hygiene, where practices relating to personnel, ingredients, equipment, packaging and environment aim to prevent product contamination by pathogenic micro-organisms.




The difference here is whether is needs to be physically segregated or not. While the both the High Risk and High Care Areas would require very good hygiene care, for example full set of protective gears (face masks, hair covers, dust coats, boots, gloves etc), thorough cleaning etc. and so on... but the High Risk Area should also have proper security in place, for example, security tags for personnels, or color coded uniform, or physical barrier in place (therefore requiring authorization tags for entry).

Hope that helps.

Rgds,
Eugene

Thanks Eugene, that's clearer now!

To answer GMO's question...to me it depends on the product, if something which will be cooked or is a semi-finished product a high care area is enough. But if the product is eaten once thawed that's different.
In the french (and european?) legislation for example it's mentionned you can freeze some products if you have a freezer, of course in a high care area. But for some specific products like steak mince a high risk area must be dedicated to the production.

Hope it helps,

Regards,

Emmanuel

Imagine the product is chilled and ready to eat.

which type of product?

Regards,

Emmanuel

Hi GMO,

 

If the product is chilled and ready to eat, it is certainly high risk. As per BRC standard, this applies to products that are "ready to reheat and eat" as well. High risk product includes pate, cooked meat, prepared meals without any garnishes etc. Quiche is also high risk. 

Any food that doesn't have a food safety hurdle (like low pH, high salt, preservatives, low water activity) is considered high risk.

There are lots of movement restrictions of people and equipment in and out of high risk areas. In our facility, we have procedures on dedicated equipment control, people movement control in and out of high risk area.