Poultry Category Determination

This is all new to me..... my product background is Produce & Bakery.....

Is frozen chicken slaghter & frozen production classed as LOW OR HIGH Risk?

Please help.

Dear a stoker,

I assume yr end product is (frozen) raw poultry meat.

Not my direct area but the IFST seem to classify the above as high risk, particularly due to campylobacter. See pg4 of this attachment – “control”

campylobacteriosis.pdf   114.26KB   42 downloads

Rgds / Charles.C

The chilled food association produce an excellent book called "best practice guidelines for the production of chilled food". It's not cheap but it's useful in most food sites I've worked at and not just useful for chilled food.

http://www.chilledfo...ublications.htm
http://www.tsoshop.c...e.asp?DI=561965

(There are also other publications on that website; some of them free downloads.)

Anyway, in this guide is a flow diagram for deciding on what level of hygiene is required. (Page 39.)

If I follow it for your product, which I assume is raw, frozen chicken meat:

Q1 All components >90oC / 10 min? No
Q2 All components >70oC / 2 min? No
Q3 Not all components >70oC / 2 min? Yes
Q4 Intended to be cooked before consumption? Yes

Result: Low Risk Area. The comment is "Pathogens may remain from original components or recontamination. Cooking instructions must be validated. Shelf life may need to be short unless sufficient hurdles used." (Obviously the shelf life comment is talking about chilled foodstuffs.)

It then goes on with a standard on what the CFA deems as the requirements for the different areas; the "GMP" requirements apply to all areas and so would apply to your Low Risk area. It's important to remember Low Risk is not No Risk. It's worth considering that when you call your area a name. Calling it low risk can confuse people. I would suggest "ready to cook" as it gets the idea across.

Dear a stoker,

I realised after my posting that the terminology of high/low risk can have various meanings and the initial query was not entirely clear on what was actually sought (for obvious reasons ).

Eg L/M/H risk can refer to the assessment of –

(1) hazard
(2) activity
(3) food
(4) area
(5) business

Explanations / illustrations of each are attached below –

LMR___hazard.png   8.32KB   31 downloads
(sorry, should read LMH)
LMH__H____activity.png   5.83KB   32 downloads
LMH__L____activity.png   1.14KB   27 downloads
LMH__H____food.png   2.69KB   26 downloads
LMH__L__H____areas.png   190.1KB   27 downloads
fsai_COP_1.PDF   154.68KB   43 downloads
fsai_COP_3.pdf   90.68KB   39 downloads

Inevitably, all of the above may be raw material / process / consumer specific (amongst others).

The COP attachments (for No.5 above) use a combination of factors resulting in a medium risk for raw poultry product (cooked final product is, unsurprisingly, high risk.) This is primarily with the objective of setting a starting inspection level.

It is quite possible that "medium" may well hv similar hygiene implications as discussed by GMO, I didn't pursue the full text. Pity that GMO's ref. is not dwlable, looks good.

Rgds / Charles.C

PS it would appear that IFST attach more significance to the campylobacter problem than other organisations, or perhaps this was reason for "medium". Or perhaps I misunderstood .