Cured and Smoked Bacon produced with other ready to eat goods

Hi all!

I hope to find some help from you guys.

We are designing small good factory with quite broad range of products. But with one product I don't have experience with. And I am bit puzzled how to treat it.

We are builidng a smoke house where we will cold and hot smoke good like salmon, trout and other fish, duck, chicken and dry cured bacon.

The last product is causing some problems to me. We will produce two types of bacon. Smoked Dry Cured Bacon and Dry Cured Bacon.

Now how would you classify this product? would it be classified as a Ready To Eat and therefore processed in High Risk area along with others, or would it be treated as uncooked that need to be segregated from others?

I think Smoked Dry Cured Bacon would be safe to handle with other ready to eat products, but I have some concerns about Dry Cured Bacon, which will be just washed, sliced and packed after curing...

What your thoughts? I would appriciate your input.

Thanks

Alex

Welcome to the forum!

Are you cooking the bacon or just curing?

Dear Olafff,

Now how would you classify this product? would it be classified as a Ready To Eat and therefore processed in High Risk area along with others, or would it be treated as uncooked that need to be segregated from others?

The obvious question is - how is the product intended to be described when commercialised.?

I'm not familiar with Bacon terminologies / processing  but as per previous post, the process is relevant.

I certainly suggest you decide on the intended product's RTE / non-RTE status before you begin production. This requires writing a specification. And then validating a process to achieve the specification. The safety-related route is generically described in Codex from a haccp POV.

Rgds / Charles.C

PS - assuming the product is intended to be RTE, a detailed answer to yr query may depend on local legislation or a particular audit standard but  i think that processing of an open RTE product derived from thermal means is usually associated with a high risk area if required to be stored chilled or frozen for safety.

The BRC standard looks like it regards cured RTE products (ie no thermal process) which are required to be stored chilled or frozen for safety as associated with a high care production area.

Thank you guys for your input! and I am feeling welcomed :)

well first of all, the product is non-RTE, either cured or smoked. We are not doing any cooking, just cold smoking.

And I made my decision about it, I will designate separate processing room only for bacon, smoked and cured and will keep spearate from all the other RTE goods.

Thanks Again!