Looking for cocoa processing HACCP Plan

Hi
Anyone work in cocoa processing industry (finish product = cocoa powder n cocoa butter)
I had developed a HACCP Plan for the process and would very much appreciate if someone can share their plan for comparison.
Thanks

Hi Anton

Welcome to the forum. Have a look at the short discussion we had regarding chocolate:

Chocolate HACCP

Unfortunately this thread died out.

I'm sure a lot of us are interested in cocoa / chocolate HACCP as it is such a common ingredient in food.

Why don't you post your draft HACCP and we could comment?
We promise to be gentle.

Cheers

Yorkshire

Anton please post your HACCP plan if you want us to benchmark it.

Regards,
Simon

Hi guys,

I've been a bit busy…. so sorry for delays.
Please refer to the attached file for product flow chart and HACCP Plan of cocoa powder. Please be remind that this flow chart and HACCP plan is very plant specific

Feel free to comment and ask questions, but for the moment I have a few questions so here we go :

1. Is metal fines associated with magnet chemical / physical hazard? I've found that magnet has always been associated with physical hazard. I got metal detector to take care of metal physical hazard but worried about metal fines / heavy metal residue from grinding and refining process (mostly from grinding pin / steel ball wear off). Can I claim it as chemical hazard?

2. If you look at the HACCP plan, you can find that I have 2 CCP for 2 consecutive heat treatment steps (pasteurization and roasting). I need a comment from people that have work in cocoa processing industry. Can roasting step alone guarantee that we can achieve good microbiological properties (TPC < 5000 cfu, Yeast & mould < 50 cfu). If so what are your critical limit?

3. If you look at the HACCP plan, you can find that I have 2 CCP each for vibrating sieve and magnet. Any comments? Shall I change that to 1 CCP each? Reasons that I have double CCP for the same hazard is that we can have finer sieve for cocoa liqour since its in liquid form. As for magnet, I just feel that we need to have CCP after each grinding / refining step to control the hazard.

4. Anyone has brilliant idea on how to collect metal fines from magnet flowed with cocoa liqour?

5. I've found difficulty to find literature to back up my critical limit and would appreciate if anyone can help me with that.

Enough for questions, thanks heaps…

Cheers
Anton

Anyone care to comment on Anton's HACCP Plan?

Anyone Pls?
Simon may you lead the way? hehe

Hi Anton,

Let me see if I can help you out here. Last time I did a HACCP Program for a Cocoa Processing Plant was some time back.

Is metal fines associated with magnet chemical / physical hazard?

This is definitely a physical hazard and I think we had discussed this before in an much earlier thread. Don't be confused with metal detector vs magnet.

Magnet functions as a device in "picking up" those ferrous contaminants while metal detectors merely detects. The effectiveness of your Magnet Monitoring would largely depend on the Magnet's Gauss strength and the CCP is the last Magnet on your process flow.

Let me look at the other issues relative to your process flow before I revert.

Charles

If you look at the HACCP plan, you can find that I have 2 CCP for 2 consecutive heat treatment steps (pasteurization and roasting). I need a comment from people that have work in cocoa processing industry. Can roasting step alone guarantee that we can achieve good microbiological properties (TPC < 5000 cfu, Yeast & mould < 50 cfu). If so what are your critical limit?

Anton,

Sure you can. As a matter of fact, IMO if I were to prepare this plan, I would only consider the roasting process as the ONLY CCP for the monitoring of temperature / time with the purpose of microbial destruction in mind. Although, steam pasteurizing serves the same function, roasting is the final destruction step. The CL is your temp and time while the outcome of your process i.e. micro result range is a validation of your process objective.

we can have finer sieve for cocoa liqour since its in liquid form

I can understand the intended objective.

As for magnet, I just feel that we need to have CCP after each grinding / refining step to control the hazard.

Is this practical or necessary when you already have such a fine mesh on your sieve. What is your definition of a choking hazard or physical contaminant that would cause harm to public health?

Was Charles' reply helpful Anton?

Charles thx for reply

In the last discussion we have this conversation

"Is metal fines associated with magnet chemical / physical hazard?

This is definitely a physical hazard and I think we had discussed this before in an much earlier thread."

Can someone confirmed me on this one??? Is metal fines a physical hazard? Should I consider magnet as a CCP to prevent that hazard?? My idea of physical hazard would be something larger than metal fines/ powder (> 1 mm) that would physically injure your body, eg piece of metal, broken glass, broken woods etc in which i can prevent with other preventative measure suc as metal detector and vibrating sieve

As for microbial destruction step, i think i will leave 2 CCP on the plan (pasteurization and roasting) and would validate it in half a year time after i develop a statistical trend data.

I have never had experience audited by third party certifier so i want to ask this silly question hehe..... Would it be generally accepted if i set critical limit base on historical process data rather than scientific literature??

Thx for any help....

Cheers
Anton

My idea of physical hazard would be something larger than metal fines/ powder (> 1 mm) that would physically injure your body, eg piece of metal, broken glass, broken woods etc in which i can prevent with other preventative measure suc as metal detector and vibrating sieve

Anton,
What you are suggesting is that it is okay to have metal fines in your product and that your food safety objective is NOT necessary zero tolerance. This would not reflect well on your company's image and your FS Program.

Its like saying, its okay to have some spoilage bacteria in my can of baked beans even though it may not cause you harm then its probably okay to have some Clostirium Botulinun pathogen in it as well.

What you are suggesting is that it is okay to have metal fines in your product and that your food safety objective is NOT necessary zero tolerance. This would not reflect well on your company's image and your FS Program.

Sorry for jumping in, but in the flour milling industry, it is actually acceptable to have iron filings in the flour. The concern for most ppl was the bigger pieces.

Maybe not be a sound justification, since it is acceptable for iron filings (not metal filings).
I think the CL should be a threshold in this case.

My guess is that if it is industrial norm, it should be acceptable for not having a zero tolerane, like maximum level of coliform in RTE food.

Cheers,

Just changing back to salmonella - what about the Cadbury's recall. See article Sunday Times

It appears that the contamination was down to a leak in a pipe.

Apparently in house tests showed that there were traces of Salmonella in the chocolate crumb (does anyone know what this is?) from January this year. The standard spec for Salmonella in chocolate is "none detected in 25g". The leak in the pipe was probably not a forseeable hazard but surely the monitoring procedure in the final product has failed.

Any thoughts?

Just changing back to salmonella - what about the Cadbury's recall. See article Sunday Times

It appears that the contamination was down to a leak in a pipe.

Apparently in house tests showed that there were traces of Salmonella in the chocolate crumb (does anyone know what this is?) from January this year. The standard spec for Salmonella in chocolate is "none detected in 25g". The leak in the pipe was probably not a forseeable hazard but surely the monitoring procedure in the final product has failed.

Any thoughts?

Cadbury's recall discussion - - > is here

Dear Anton,
Only just noticed this thread, too much football I guess.

Only musing but did seem to me that in the development of yr HACCP Plan you must have negotiated a decision matrix for yr CCPs, this stage usually tries to deter your including 'linked CCPs' as you are considering. I think an auditor would be quite interested in yr validation for this enthusiasm.
You might well consider the use of so called 'operating limits' within a critical limit which try to avoid the painful documentation of coping with failed CCPs. Many people find them beneficial.
I daresay you know this already - regarding actual heat validation requirements, the requirement is to ensure that yr process achieves a suitable D value (as compared to a representative heat resistant bacterial species, often L.monocytogenes from memory). Procedures illustrating the general mechanics are available (modified from canning sterilisation theory). I am not in the chocolate field but I'm sure such studies will be available, especially seeing all the Salmonella fuss. The procedure involves running yr process to generate a product temperature / time profile from which you can calculate an actual D value and compare to the target. Commercial data logging 'mini-capsules' are available for attaching to the product.

For the subject of metal detection, suggest the extended thread -
http://www.saferpak....topic=317&st=20

I gave a possible ref. for iron filing limits in above thread -

http://www-seafood.u...pt28.htm#Glass2

The above thread eventually collapsed a bit on the quantitative aspect because of the perceived 'moral' unacceptability in stating a company product tolerance for such a hazard (eg traces of metal filings may be found in this product).This is precisely illustrated in CharlesChews post in this thread. I have to say I agree with him but the way that product specs are set up (must pass a certain met.detector standard), such a tolerance seems implicitly unavoidable. I am intrigued by Just Me's comment about the flour industry's stated (?) acceptance levels for iron filings in current thread, is a net ref. to this available please ?

Rgds / Charles.C

Thanks again for your input here Charles; hopefully Anton will provide you with some feedback.

Regards,

Simon

I am intrigued by Just Me's comment about the flour industry's stated (?) acceptance levels for iron filings in current thread, is a net ref. to this available please ?

Dear Charles C,

The thing is that iron itself was added as part of flour enrichment. So, we would generally catch quite some fine filings if we run some enriched flour through with a handheld magnet. We have compared the iron filings caught by the handheld magnet, and the iron in the enrich supplement.

In such case, it would never be zero tolerance, because we add in the iron. The zero tolerance would apply to iron of a certain size.

Back to the chocolate product, I'm not too convince that any magnet would be able to give a tolerance of zero.
We have checked with magnet suppliers to validate the gauss value, with some study on the gauss value through the entire area of the magnet contraption, found that, however high the gauss value, there would be certain area in between the magnets that would have very low gauss value.

Remember during our early years of schooling, we were given magnets and iron dust to study the formation of the dust on the piece of paper when we place magnets underneath? There would be areas where the dust level would be very low...

Cheers,

Dear Just Me,
You should have been a politician.
I didn't quite follow all the reasoning but you've convinced me on the flour. I only queried it since I once went round a bakery, saw all the metal on the magnets and asked where it came from - answer was 'the process'. I scored it as an evasion.
(For chocolate I think we are talking about detection levels perhaps).
Thks for the reply.
Rgds / Charles.C

You should have been a politician.

Dear Charles C.,

I will take that as a compliment on my ability to convince people.
But I'll passon the idea, I don't play dirty.

(For chocolate I think we are talking about detection levels perhaps).

I would agree, because there would no doubt be some dust that got through. I think a defect action level would be ok. But chocolate processors I think use fine sieves that may have taken off the very small pieces anyway.

Where is our metal detection guru Charles Chew when we need him??

Cheers,

Where is our metal detection guru Charles Chew when we need him??

I am still around - just very busy thats all. This thread seems to go on forever but its nice to note that there has been good discussions on this "subjective" issue on metal detection.

Moving away somewhat, we do need to understand the difference when deliberate process intervention is pursued to "enrich" or "fortify" the intended end products (i.e. flour etc) versus iron "fillings" or "fines" that may have a hazardous impact to public health.

Consuming excessive iron supplements can be very dangerous and we need to know the difference between elemental, compound or chelated irons to know what make these dangerous. I certainly do not want to have non-molecular irons in my food.

Personally, I think this thread has more room to go. One issue I like to talk about is BRC's requirement for metal detectable plasters to be used. Now does that mean that all Companies embracing BRC-Food must have metal detectors or magnets in place......it looks like it. But taking the cue from Andrea (separate thread), supposing my FMEA justifies otherwise