Dear MicroSysCo,
Welcome to the Forum !,
As I'm sure you know, yr queries are by no means unusual. I am not a direct user of the ISO standard but I can offer some input from longtime viewing of posts here and some looking around the net. Some people will not agree with my opinions of course.
The truth is that the differences of opinion such as you refer hv arisen from various reasons. Originally the team which developed ISO 22000 had certain initial objectives in introducing the concept of OPRP however as a result of feedback through the drafting stages a lot of changes occurred. To understand the pre-issuing background of the 22k standard unfortunately requires considerable digging into the recorded seminar / internal details, many of which are available on this forum ca 2003-5 but rarely on the net (in English language anyway).
Subsequent to the issuance of the standard, the arguments over interpretation of OPRP continued (if you can read French, there are copious records available on the Net in certain archives). AFAIK, the only detailed textbooks on this topic are in French, authored by people who were part of the team which developed ISO 22000. And these people also still had differing viewpoints on certain aspects !
I am not an auditor however some of the posts here ca 2005 by auditors indicate that some confusion existed for them also however it appears that a fair amount of auditorial rationalisation (necessarily) soon took place even if not openly stated. Plus ISO 22004 was rapidly issued to (attempt to) clarify some of the confusion. After that the ISO team seem to have more or less left the whole issue in the hands of consultants, auditors etc (maybe i am being unfair to ISO but that's my opinion).
It is rather amazing to me that so little "official" discussion of this topic has appeared in open sources compared to say traditional HACCP however perhaps one should remember that HACCP has taken 30+ years so far and is still able to arouse arguments over what is a CCP. The difference is that considerable expert material is readily accessible on the net to facilitate self-study however, even so, i would not claim that HACCP is easy.
Anyway, if you wish to see some review of the OPRP background, I can suggest this post as a starter (and the surrounding thread) -
http://www.ifsqn.com...dpost__p__36566
(eg DOC2)
There are many later threads containing further discussions / arguments on the topic if you are really interested but these tend to bypass the original ideas and focus on the current, more rationalised-pragmatised, viewpoints as auditorially popular. But perhaps you are fully aware of these already?.
Rgds / Charles.C