Is There An Industrial Benchmark?

The polling on the previous topic "Can it be Possible" to have zero CCPs seems to suggest a wide opinion although a more active polling activity could have provided a more realistic indication.

Prior to the identification process of CCPs, we would have identified a list of potential hazards that we would need to deal with in our Haccp Plan. These would by and large cover the widely known hazards of "Microbial", "Chemicals" and "Physicals" contaminations.

Interestingly, almost all manufacturing processes encounter the presence of the entire range of hazards and whether all these need to be addressed in the Haccp Plan is another story and if so, justifications must prevail.

As there are THREE CATEGORIES of hazards, does that mean that we need to have at least a CCP for each category? Generally not so unless justifications exist.

This is NOT an industrial benchmark but personally, I think the average CCP number should be 4 - 5 CCPs per process OR less in an initial Haccp Plan working towards 2 - 3 CCPs as the system matures.

We could share some of your experiences in this area if anyone wish to exploit this forum's views.

Cheers
Charles Chew

The Haccp Team uses the decision tree to brainstorm on the validated process flowchart and decides on the status between CPs and CCPs and ultimately the number of CCPs that should be controlled for that process. There is no magic number.

The correctness and practicality of the numbers of CCPs for the Haccp Plan is for the Haccp Team to determine base on severity, riskiness and the likelihood of the hazards occurrence. This is a subjective issue and as such, there are no hard and fast rules.

But what the food auditors will be keen to look at will be the "HACCP Validation Summary Table" and "HACCP Verification Summary Table" which should contain evidences of scientific, industrial or techincal suppport with regards to the establishment of Critical Limits and verification activities respectively.

As long as you have these in place, you can have all the CCPs you want to have. The food auditor will not disturb you unless of course, your documentations and record-keeping are not in order......and I can almost assure you that if this happens, you are in BIG trouble.

Any interesting experiences to share from out there?

Charles Chew