Visual Inspection and Sorting as CCP

Dear friends,

I want to discuss following topic

Whether Visual inspection and sorting is considered as CCP as per CODEX guidelines.

Best regards,

Dear Siddhu,

Maybe yes, maybe no

You need to give more information - product / process / specs etc.

Rgds / Charles.C

I know a producer/packer of oysters, who did determine the inspection/sorting of oysters as a CCP.
However it was hard to them to make monitoring reports.

Critical limits, corrective actions, instructions, etc were fine. But there were no records showing conformity. The bad oysters were sort out and destroyed.
I think the sorting in this company is a critical proces, cause you can get really sick from bad oysters. I also think that it is not possible to handle it completely as a CCP. No monitoring-reports --> therefore no verification possible. No blocking or recall needed, if the critical limit is exceeded, etc.

But I agree with Charles C. --> tell us more about the proces/product/hazards/etc, and we can discuss it here

I think, yes, at a push and oysters are probably a good example. The BRC standard mentions this point specifically:

2.8.2 Any critical limits based on subjective data (such as visual inspection) shall be supported by clear guidance or examples.

So what I'd have is a poster or SOP where there are photographic examples of acceptable and not acceptable. You also definitely need some paperwork which I think is where this gets more difficult.

I don't think it's ideal to base things on appearance; however, as the others have said, maybe if you let us know the process, we might be able to advise more. I would say this kind of CCP is rare, possibly more common in a catering environment where cooking of some items (e.g. eggs or bacon) might be gauged by a visual check as they can't really be probed.

I'd also argue that a lot of validation work would need to be done for any kind of visual check. In the oyster example Madam A gave, it would involve a lot of trialling visual segregation and then sending off the resulting "pass" and "fail" batches for micro testing to check that the segregation works! Also a decent level of verification micro testing would be needed.

Dear Siddhu,

I should hv mentioned there is a huge forum thread here on sieving / sorting etc if you do a bit of searching. The conclusion over any CCP status was that it "depends ....

Rgds / Charles.C

Dear Siddhu,

Any control measure can be a CCP. It totally depends upon the position of your control point and the nature of your product i.e it is to be further processed or it is an RTE.

Regards
Siraj