Raw Material and Ingredient Specification Categorization

Hi All,
I hope someone can help me on this. The Catering that I'm working on is going for HACCP certification. I understand that I need to prepare the raw material and ingredient spec/description before proceed to HACCP analysis for raw material. The problem I'm facing now is developing the spec/description coz we use variety of items such as meat, seafood, fruits, vegetables, spices, canned food, pickle vegetable, etc, etc. Do I need to do ALL or categorized? How can I categorized? Would very much appreciate if someone can share their knowledge and experiences.

Thank you in advance.
Josephine

We did it ONE BY ONE in our company. And it will help you be more familiar with the raw materials that you are using which is good especially in the hazard analysis and risk assessment part. If you clearly know what your raw materials are, then you know which hazard will occur significantly (knowing that you too are aware of the process controls and its effects on food, as well as external factors that can cause cross contamination). Also, check Codex, we used them and it helped us a lot.

http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/Y1579E/y1579e03.htm

:)

I hope this can somehow help! :)

Goodluck!

Rather than writing your own specifications you can get specifications from your vendors, review those, and adopt them. You will need to make sure you have a control in place that requires vendors to notify you before changing specifications on a material, but that can be a lot less time consuming than trying to write your own specs for each item and still give you the information that you need.

Oops, didn't mean to "thank" - meant to "reply"!

You’re referring to your supplier’s raw materials, yes? So you need to ensure you have an “Approved Supplier Program” in place.

Not only do you require product specifications from your suppliers but also their food safety certification.

You are in the catering industry: yes, there would be a lot of specifications that you must gather. But if your suppliers are practicing food safety and are certified, they would already have these product specifications in place and it should be as easy as an email or fax to your company.

Bad news is, quite often many of the suppliers don’t practice food safety and you will struggle getting some of these specifications. If this is the case, you have two options: [1] change suppliers; [2] develop the specifications yourself with your supplier’s approval (to ensure the data is accurate).

You can’t categorise your supplier’s product specifications. Each ingredient you use is different. Safety criteria for one spec might differ from another. For example, nuts that you purchase from one country might have a higher microbiological risk than nuts purchased from another country.

On top of your certifications and product specifications, you may need to also ensure you receive Certificates of Analysis for your high risk ingredients, such as egg pulp.

So in summary, you must ensure you have the following documentation from your suppliers:

• Food safety certification
• Product specifications for all raw ingredients
• Certificates of analysis for high risk raw ingredients

Welcome to the world of food safety. It will drive you crazy initially and overwhelm you but I promise you it gets better and is worth all the initial stress.

Dear Josephine,

You may find this post (and thread) of interest -

http://www.ifsqn.com...dpost__p__59495

Rgds / Charles.C

Dear Sheena, William, JAKMQA and charles,
Thank you ALL for your infor. It was a great help.

Hi All,
After establishing the Raw Material and ingredient spec, the next step is to establish the Hazard Analysis for all the raw mat' and ingredients (microbiological, chemical, physical and Allergen). Wonder anyone can help me to Hazard analysis for vegetable and Poultry. What are hazards might present and the control measures.

Thank you.

Hi All,
After establishing the Raw Material and ingredient spec, the next step is to establish the Hazard Analysis for all the raw mat' and ingredients (microbiological, chemical, physical and Allergen). Wonder anyone can help me to Hazard analysis for vegetable and Poultry. What are hazards might present and the control measures.

Thank you.

You've just listed the hazards above

Microbiological
Chemical
Physical
Allergen

You could also have:

Risk of deliberate adulteration ( by employee or visitor). I'm sure there are more depending on the area you are working in, those are the ones I am familiar with.

Make a matrix of these for each step of your process and then figure out what is the probability of these hazards arising and what you can do to control the hazard.

It'll take a bit of time in at the start but once you have a few steps done it's a cut and paste job.


I would post an example but I am afraid of ridicule by Charles and Co., , who don't seem to approve of my interpretation of HACCP

Hi All,
After establishing the Raw Material and ingredient spec, the next step is to establish the Hazard Analysis for all the raw mat' and ingredients (microbiological, chemical, physical and Allergen). Wonder anyone can help me to Hazard analysis for vegetable and Poultry. What are hazards might present and the control measures.

Thank you.

Dear Josephine,

The attachment below includes a fairly detailed list of (haccp) microbial pathogens for tomato (mixture of genera and species).
Generic HACCP Plan Tomato.pdf   451.64KB   173 downloads
(Some users would handle parts of the HACCP content within a GAP scheme)

@trubertq. No idea what you mean by "ridicule" but I regret that you are obviously feeling so insecure.

I think it is apparent that all inputs to this forum are warmly welcomed. It is surely not unusual that forum discussions contain both agreement and disagreement. Preferably constructive and amicable.

Rgds / Charles.C

Dear Josephine,

I think, you need to specify the vegetable (kind, fresh, processed, canned, low-acid, in brine, etc) that you will be using. Like what Charles have given for tomato. Also, like what was discussed by bill1952 above, you should note the country of origin, as this is important for you to determine the likely occurrence of a particular hazard (for eg, previous break outs of e.coli / salmonella in a particular area).

You need to be specific for after hazard identification and risk assessment you will then be providing ways to reduce the occurence/number of these hazards, and this is hazard-specific (i guess? ). If it is biological, what kind? pathogenic bacteria, yeast or mold or pests (and so on), after which, how are you going to reduce this? preventive measures? If chemical, is it pesticide residues, toxins?

Read and read and read! It will help a lot.

For biological hazards reference, try looking for Bad Bug Book, also, do not forget books like, Microbiology of Safe Foods and Modern Food Microbiology and search for more! (but do not forget to read the news/updates about the latest topic on food pathogens and contaminants)

Goodluck!

Hi,
I think Categorization of raw material, semi product is not a good solution, if you start with it somewhile you should rearrange somehow.
You should do it in individually.
Regards,