Coffee Sold for Brewing Food Safety Question-Intended Use
I work for a small batch coffee roaster we only sell roasted beans. In our food safety plan we're stating that the intended use "coffee is roasted and sold for consumption via brewing. coffee is not a ready to eat product" but then I realized we have a few customers that use it as an ingredient in baking, thus the coffee doesn't go through the brewing process. Since coffee is inherently low risk does this matter? would I have to change our food safety plan to account for people using it as an ingredient. The only control we currently have is sanitation. Any help would be appreciated!
One would assume that the baking step would be similar to brewing, but this may be of help
Yes. You need to revise your food safety plan accordingly.
Hi, we have a couple of roasters as clients and all of them show intended use for brewing and that is how their food safety plans are.
So, you can go to the work of making changes as you see fit, however what you have now will fly too.
Why would changes not be required? The intended use of their product for some customers is very different than roasting the coffee. Reminder...FSMA
"the regulations established by FSMA, regardless of whether your food is RTE or not ready-to-eat you need to conduct a hazard analysis.2 The hazard analysis identifies and evaluates known or reasonably foreseeable hazards for each type of food manufactured, processed, packed, or held at your facility to determine whether there are any hazards requiring a preventive control. The hazard analysis must consider biological hazards, including microbiological hazards such as Salmonella, Listeria and E.coli, chemical, and physical hazards.
As part of the hazard analysis, you must assess the severity of the illness or injury if the hazard were to occur and the probability that the hazard will occur in the absence of preventive controls; you must include an evaluation of environmental pathogens whenever an RTE food is exposed to the environment prior to packaging and the packaged food does not receive a treatment that would significantly minimize the pathogen. You also must consider the effect of certain specified factors on the safety of the finished food for the intended consumer."
Depending on how the beans are used as an ingredient in baking they may not undergo sufficient heat treatment. Seems to me the plan needs to be updated and all documents for the customer should have a qualifying statement "beans have not undergone any treatment to reduce or eliminate potential pathogens", or something similar.
Hi, we have a couple of roasters as clients and all of them show intended use for brewing and that is how their food safety plans are.
So, you can go to the work of making changes as you see fit, however what you have now will fly too.
Hi
What are the hazards (physical, chemical, biological or allergen)? Will they be destroyed in the baking process - I would mention it anyway, even if there is no risk - the document is not just there for risk identification, but to prove that you considered all areas of risk.