Does HACCP belong in Quality or Operations?
Hello All,
My workplace is undergoing structural changes. Management wants to move HACCP program to Operations and they will take onwership of HACCP.
HACCP coordinator will stay within quality group and help operations in maintaining the haccp binder. Is this practical?
In past, I have always seen quality taking charge of HACCP.
Can you please guide me.
Thanks.
Quality should have 100% ownership over HACCP. Ops having control of quality ends up being a conflict of interest, in my experience.
Quality should own HACCP.
Hi nehank,
For me if doesn’t really matter as there should be a multi-disciplinary team responsible for developing the HACCP System. It would depend on the nature of the operation, resources, processes, staff experience and on-site knowledge of the products, processes and HACCP. Normally I would expect to see the senior Quality/Technical person on site as the HACCP Team Leader but there is no reason why it can be someone from another department if they are appropriately qualified and experienced.
In some ways it might help the development of a food safety culture if the Operations department has a major role in the HACCP System.
If we refer to CODEX Recommended International Code of Practice General Principles of Food Hygiene 2020 Edition:
SECTION 2: GENERAL GUIDELINES FOR THE APPLICATION OF THE HACCP SYSTEM
SECTION 3: APPLICATION
3.1 Assemble HACCP Team and Identify Scope (Step 1)
The FBO should ensure that the appropriate knowledge and expertise are available for the development of an effective HACCP system. This may be achieved by assembling a multidisciplinary team responsible for different activities within the operation, e.g. production, maintenance, quality control, cleaning and disinfection. The HACCP team is responsible for developing the HACCP plan.
Kind regards,
Tony
Organizations can train certain people from any department to run HACCP. It can be in operation, QA or completely outsourced to a third party.
I don't think HACCP should be owned by any one department. As previously mentioned, a HACCP team should own it, and ideally it involves someone from every department. QA people alone might not know what possible hazards can come from a production line, a production manager might now know the hazards related to shipping/receiving, etc.
And hate to say it, but a production team alone responsible for an entire HACCP program ends up reading like convicts running the court system...
A team of competent individuals should develop and own your HACCP system, be they from Quality, production, management or from outside the organization (not ideal but is you only have 1 people in the org, it might be necessary). Our Quality Manager owns HAQCP and I (SQF Assurance Manager) own HACCP. We have some of the same people on our teams.
We also have a multidisciplinary team, however our HACCP Co-ordinator is part of Production. Quality still has the final approval along with our company President and the final review of all documents. With that said all members of the team and anyone who review/documents any CCP is a trained qualified individual and include QC, QA, Production, Maintenance, Operations and Sr. Management.